Lima beans can be deadly

While boiled lima beans are a safe and… well, not delicious, but certainly edible food source, raw lima beans are a completely different matter. Lima beans have evolved with multiple defense mechanisms to avoid being eaten. Their most deadly defense mechanism is cyanogenesis, where they produce cyanide from the compound linamarin for the person or animal unlucky enough to accidentally eat them. Luckily, most US varieties of lima beans are required to have low levels of linamarin to be sold.

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