Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hi brain Stuff Lauren vogel Bomb here with a classic episode from our archives. In this one, we go into the perhaps impolite but fascinating world of farts. Hey, they're brain stuff, Lauren vogel Bomb here. It's as Bart Simpson once said, beans beans the musical fruit. The more you eat, the more you toot. Beans have a reputation as a musical fruit, but for all their noisiness, they don't usually make farts
smell worse. The same is true for most flatulens causing foods, such as asparagus or chickpeas. They may make you fart more often, but they don't make your farts particularly stinky. Sure, a vegetarians diet based on nuts, fruit, vegetables, and lagoons is rich in fiber, but fiber alone is not to blame for the increased gas production that comes with plant based eating habits. The culprit is actually a type of
sugar molecule called oligo saccharai. Oligo saccharides are too large to be easily absorbed through the wall of the small intestine, so they move through the large intestines unfettered until they meet some of the seventy plus kinds of bacteria that live there. As these bacteria feast on the all ego saccharides, they create an abundance of gassy byproducts. Colloquially speaking, the
bacteria fart and you fart out their farts. While the jury is still out on whether vegetarians fart more often than omnivores, there is evidence that vegetarian farts maybe among the least noxious, or not as noxious as a meat eater s farts. Anyway, the credit for smelly farts goes in part to meat that is consumed as part of an omnivorous diet. For the most part, meat contains high levels of sulfur and sulfur Latin foods produce more odors
as they're digested. When bacteria in the digestive system break down foods, it produces all kinds of byproducts when they break down foods rich in sulfur. The byproducts include sulfides and mercpton's, the gases that lend their unmistakable smell to farts. Hydrogen sulfide in particular causes past gas to have an odor reminiscent of rotten eggs. The other gases produced during digestion, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, oxygen, and methane are virtually odorless. By contrast,
most vegetables produce fewer smelly byproducts during digestion. But don't think that if you don't eat meat you'll never have smelly farts. Any food that is high in sulfites, such as cabbage, broccoli, onions, brussels sprouts, peas, leaks, and garlic, will result in sulfide and mercantin rich gas production. So even though omnivores and vegetarians may not have much in common when it comes to selecting a main dish off the menu, they can raise their forks and unity at
the wonders of gut bacteria. Regardless of what we eat, we all fart, and sometimes it's smellier because of what we've eaten. Today's episode was written by Laurie L. Dove and produced by Tristo McNeil and Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots of other completely dignified topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is a production of my Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit their heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,