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Why Beans Give You Gas
By Hannah Holmes
with additional notes by Dr. Don. DeWitt
To access the outside basis for this report: Click WOOFERGAS.
| Most of us squirm and pretend we
smell nothing unusual. The less reputable among us blame it on the dog.
The more reputable among us grin and lay the blame where it belongs: on
the beans.
The gaseous after-effects of baked beans aren't exactly the fault of the humble legume -- the dirty work is done by bacteria residing in your large intestine. So why do beans produce lethal toots when, say, rice produces none? The secret lies in bacterial taste buds. Beans, as well as such gassy goods as cabbage, soybeans, peas and onions, are naturally sweetened with a family of sugars called oligosaccharides. These sugars are big, clumsy molecules -- too big to slip into your body through the lining of the small intestine. Normally enzymes in the small intestine would rush in and snap these molecules apart like Legos. But due to a gross oversight, an anti-oligosaccharide enzyme is not standard equipment in a human being. This enzyme is alpha-galactosidase. |
| (DeWitt note: More information on raffinose and its oligosaccharide relatives may be found HERE.) |
| So these complex sugars pass unmolested through the small intestine and enter the large intestine still bearing valuable nutrients. Unabashed at digging into leftovers, the less reputable bacteria among the 200 strains in your large-intestine start to chow down. Their population grows as they divide into new generations to take advantage of the bounty. And as they gulp in the big sugars, they let out gas. In essence, your gut accumulates millions of wee bacterial farts. |
| Believe it or not, the bulk of any given toot is unscented. Gas is composed mainly of unsmellable stuff like hydrogen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide. One-third of us regularly produce mildly offensive methane, while the rest do not. Sulfur compounds in very small concentrations are the most common cause of embarrassment. As you have no doubt observed, the exact ingredients of the meal determine the nuances of the final product. Cabbage, for instance, is high in sulfur, and sulfur is a key component in skunk perfume. Problem foods can be found HERE. Designer gases, produced as the bacteria process various foods, add subtleties to the bouquet. | |
| But avoiding
the smelly foods won't necessarily save you from the terrible toots.
Gut bacteria don't turn up their noses at other offerings. Essentially, anything that arrives at the colon intact will appeal to the palate of one bug or another. Stress, for instance, can hurry a meal though your tubing and dump goodies into the large intestine you might have digested given more time. (DeWitt note: Did you know that it is normal to fart 14 times per day? More on flatulence) But there's hope for those who love beans, but not the results. Mold is blessed with the bean enzyme, called alpha-galactosidase. So AkPharma, Inc., a New Jersey company, extracts the enzyme from a species known to its friends as Aspergillus niger, and sells it to the easily-embarrassed under the brand name Beano. Sprinkle a few drops of enzyme on your beans and enjoy. The enzyme will snap apart those big sugars into handy little sugars, like sucrose, glucose and fructose, your body can use. The stinky bugs in your colon will go hungry. The breath-holding social pauses will go away. The dog will go unmaligned. Well, actually ... soybeans are a very common ingredient in dog food. Maybe it was the dog! |
 Figure 1 |
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Vocabulary
flatus, n. The decorous word for a fart derives from the Latin word for wind. Flatulent refers to being liable to, or prolific in, windy blasts, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. And it can describe both a personal problem and a problematic person. Likewise, flatuous has been invoked to describe bubbly wines.
This article was taken from the
original found at:
http://www.discovery.com/area/skinnyon/skinnyon970815/skinnyon.html
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