“…The causes of these effects are not known, though antinutritional factors, possibly thermolabile, have been suspected. Antitrypsic factors have only a low activity (Wilson and McNab, 1972) but other compounds have been implicated including lipoxygenase, which destroys linoleic acid (Drapron, 1973), antithyroidic factors (Bergner and Miinchow, 1969), haemagglutinin (Marquardt et al, 1974), antiniacin (Guillaume, 1973) and tannins (Wilson and McNab, 1972;Martin-Tanguy et al, 1976). This paper describes experiments using field beans which were designed to elucidate the significance of lipoxygenase and tannins.…”