Evil Beans, Evil Balls

I tried to remember why Pythagoras supposedly thought beans were evil the other night.

Jess and I were talking about beans. I'm too discrete to say why.

I found this interesting piece in which the author suggests that the whole problem might have come from an inititial translation error, arising because the word for beans and testicles was the same, and that Pythagoras might have been forbidding sexual indulgence.