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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain stuff from how stuff works. Hey, they're

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Speaker 1: brain stuff, Lauren Vogel bomb here. It's as Bart Simpson

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Speaker 1: once said, beans beans the musical fruit. The more you eat,

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Speaker 1: the more you toot. Beans have a reputation as a

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Speaker 1: musical fruit, But for all their noisiness, they don't usually

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Speaker 1: make farts smell worse. The same is true for most

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Speaker 1: flatulens causing foods, such as asparagus or chickpeas. They may

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Speaker 1: make you fart more often, but they don't make your

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Speaker 1: farts particularly stinky. Sure, a vegetarians diet based on nuts, fruit, vegetables,

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Speaker 1: and lagoons is rich in fiber, but fiber alone is

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Speaker 1: not to blame for the increased gas production that comes

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Speaker 1: with plant based eating habits. The culprit is actually a

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Speaker 1: type of sugar molecule called oligo saccharides. Oligo saccharides are

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Speaker 1: too large to be easily absorbed through the wall of

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Speaker 1: the small intestine, so they move through the large intestines

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Speaker 1: unfettered until they meet some of these seventy plus kinds

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Speaker 1: of bacteria that live there. As these bacteria east on

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Speaker 1: the all ego saccharides, they create an abundance of gassy byproducts.

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Speaker 1: Colloquially speaking, the bacteria fart and you fart out their farts.

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Speaker 1: While the jury is still out on weather vegetarians fart

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Speaker 1: more often than omnivores. There is evidence that vegetarian farts

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Speaker 1: may be among the least noxious, or not as noxious

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Speaker 1: as a meat eaters farts. Anyway, the credit for smelly

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Speaker 1: farts goes in part to meat that is consumed as

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Speaker 1: part of an omnivorous diet. For the most part, meat

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Speaker 1: contains high levels of sulfur and sulfur. Latin foods produce

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Speaker 1: more odors as they're digested. When bacteria in the digestive

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Speaker 1: system break down foods, it produces all kinds of byproducts

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Speaker 1: when they break down foods rich in sulfur. The byproducts

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Speaker 1: include sulfides and mercantons, the gases that lend their unmistakable

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Speaker 1: smell to farts. Hydrogen sulfide in particular, causes past gas

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Speaker 1: to have an odor reminiscent of rotten eggs. The other

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Speaker 1: gases produced during digestion, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, oxygen, and methane,

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Speaker 1: are virtually odorless. By contrast, most vegetables produce fewer smelly byproducts.

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Speaker 1: During digestion. But don't think that if you don't eat

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Speaker 1: meat you'll never have smelly farts. Any food that is

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Speaker 1: high in sulfites, such as cabbage, broccoli, onions, brussels sprouts, peas, leaks,

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Speaker 1: and garlic, will result in sulfide and mercatin rich gas production.

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Speaker 1: So even though omnivores and vegetarians may not have much

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Speaker 1: in common when it comes to selecting a main dish

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Speaker 1: off the menu, they can raise their forks and unity

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Speaker 1: at the wonders of gut bacteria. Regardless of what we eat,

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Speaker 1: we all fart, and sometimes it's smellier because of what

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Speaker 1: we've eaten. Today's episode was written by Laurie L. Dove

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Speaker 1: and produced by Tristan McNeil. For more on this and

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Speaker 1: lots of other completely dignified topics, visit our home planet,

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Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com