"Is Boiling Green Bean Soup for 10 Minutes the Best Way to Beat the Summer Heat?"

Certainly, mung beans are indispensable for clearing heat and relieving summer heat. The most common way to consume mung beans is to cook them into soup. Many people believe that mung bean soup needs to be cooked for a long time to relieve summer heat, but this is actually a misconception. Mung bean soup should be boiled for 10 minutes to achieve its cooling effect.

Benefits of Mung Beans

According to the "Kai Bao Materia Medica," mung beans are sweet, cold, and non-toxic, entering the heart and stomach meridians. They are primarily used to treat erythroderma, vexation heat, urticaria, qi rushing upwards, and can be ground into juice, cooked, used to reduce swelling and qi, and detoxify heat. Mung beans, with their sweet and cool taste, belong to the heart and stomach meridians. They possess the functions of clearing heat and detoxifying, promoting urination to relieve summer heat, quenching thirst and strengthening the stomach, and promoting urination to reduce swelling. They are mainly used to treat heat-induced thirst, damp-heat diarrhea, edema, abdominal distension, ulcers, sores, erysipelas, mumps, acne, and other skin conditions.

The protein and phospholipids in mung beans stimulate the nerves and enhance appetite, essential for nourishing many vital organs of the body. The polysaccharide components in mung beans can enhance the activity of serum lipoprotein lipase, hydrolyzing triglycerides in lipoproteins to reduce blood lipids, thereby preventing and treating coronary heart disease and angina pectoris. Mung beans contain globulin and polysaccharides, which promote the breakdown of cholesterol in the liver into bile acids, accelerating the secretion of bile salts in the bile, and reducing the absorption of cholesterol in the small intestine. Clinical trials have shown that the active ingredients in mung beans have anti-allergic effects, treating diseases such as urticaria. They can inhibit Staphylococcus aureus and some viruses, clearing heat and detoxifying. Mung beans are rich in trypsin inhibitors, which protect the liver by reducing protein degradation, thereby protecting the kidneys.

Mung beans are generally edible, especially suitable for those with poisoning, eye diseases, hypertension, edema, and conjunctivitis. However, due to their cold nature, they should be consumed with caution by those with yang deficiency, spleen and stomach deficiency cold, and diarrhea.

Cooking Mung Bean Soup for 10 Minutes is Best

To relieve summer heat, it is best to drink mung bean soup without the beans. Simply drink the clear soup (boiled for no longer than 10 minutes, using cold water to cook raw mung beans and boiling over high heat for five to six minutes) to achieve the desired effect. Additionally, mung beans cook better when paired with other ingredients. For example, to combat heatstroke, try mung bean and honeysuckle flower soup: boil 100g of mung beans and 30g of honeysuckle flowers in water for about 10 minutes and drink the clear soup to alleviate heat.

Cooking mung bean soup until the beans are crisp provides excellent heat-clearing and detoxifying effects. Due to its diuretic properties, drinking mung bean soup after food or drug poisoning can eliminate toxins from the body and has a certain therapeutic effect on heat-induced swelling, thirst, dysentery, abscesses, and acne toxins. This type of mung bean soup, though cloudy in appearance and less effective in relieving summer heat, has a strong heat-clearing and detoxifying effect. Moreover, drinking mung bean soup can lower blood pressure and cholesterol, preventing atherosclerosis.

Who Should Avoid Drinking Mung Bean Soup?

1. People with a cold constitution: While mung bean soup can prevent heatstroke and treat food poisoning, it is not suitable for those with a cold constitution characterized by cold limbs, weakness, cold and painful lower back and legs, diarrhea, etc. Consuming mung beans may worsen these symptoms or cause digestive issues such as severe dehydration, joint and muscle pain, stomach cold, and chronic gastritis due to spleen and stomach weakness.

2. Elderly, children, and people with weak constitutions: Since mung beans contain more protein than chicken, the large molecular proteins need to be converted into small molecular peptides and amino acids under the action of enzymes before being absorbed by the body. These individuals may have poor gastrointestinal function, leading to diarrhea due to indigestion.

3. People taking various medications: Mung beans' detoxification effect stems from their ability to bind with organic phosphorus and heavy metals, forming precipitates. However, these detoxifying components can also react