Foodsday Tuesday: The Musical Fruit[s and Vegetables]

Last night, to celebrate St. Patrick's day properly, I feasted upon corned beef and cabbage. Cabbage, as you probably know, is one of those vegetables that can make you really popular in places like the grocery store and your yoga class, right up there with beans, cheese, and soda.

And that got me to thinking: while I've written a Foodsday Tuesday post about poop, its cleaner and more sanitary first cousin, the fart, hasn't really been discussed. (Except for that one time that Pencopal went there in the comments section...) I mean, we all pretty much know why we fart (gasses produced by digestion get trapped in the stomach) and what makes us fart (beans, bell peppers, eggs, broccoli, asparagus...), but what's the direct connection? In other words, why do we fart more when we eat corn on the cob than when we have a few slices of roasted chicken?

The answer, at least according to LiveScience.com, is sugar: fructose, which is found in plants like onions, corn, and wheat (as well as in sodas and candies); lactose, which is found in dairy products; raffinose, which is found in beans and veggies like cauliflower and cabbage; and sorbitol, which, in addition to being present in fruits, is used in artificial sweeteners.

The bacteria that live in your lower intestine break down the food that you eat in order to help convert it to nutrients. During the process, hydrogen sulfide gas is produced (especially if you ate foods high in sulfur, like the aforementioned cabbage). Hydrogen sulfide, as you may recall from your high school science classes, is the same stuff that makes rotten eggs smell so bad. So, the more cabbage you ate yesterday, the less people probably want to be around you today. (All that beer you had definitely didn't help, either: the fiber in the beer, combined with the CO2 that makes it carbonated, means there's a lot of extra gas passing through your intestines and out your anus. Yes, I said "anus." What would you have rather I said?)

Now, as to why those smelly cabbage-and-beer farts feel warmer and smell more than your run-of-the-mill bean burrito farts (Point: Cinco de Mayo), we turn to the oh-so-funny Facts on Farts:

Most fart gas comes from swallowed air and consists largely of nitrogen and carbon dioxide, the oxygen having been absorbed by the time it reaches the anal opening. These gases are odorless, although they often pick up other (and more odiferous) components on the way through the bowel. They emerge from the anus in fairly large bubbles at body temperature. A person can often achieve a good sound with these voluminous farts, but they are commonly (but not always!) mundane with respect to odor, and don't feel particularly warm.

Another major source of fart gas is bacterial action. Bacterial fermentation and digestion processes produce heat as a byproduct as well as various pungent gases. The resulting bubbles of gas tend to be small, hot, and concentrated with stinky bacterial metabolic products. These emerge as the notorious, warm, SBD (Silent-But-Deadly), often in amounts too small to produce a good sound, but excelling in stench.

There you have it, folks: more about farting than you probably ever wanted to see in a food column. But might I just suggest you lay off on the leftover corned beef and cabbage tonight? Your coworkers will thank you in the morning.

Photo of some delicious but gas-causing corned beef and cabbage via Flickr user Jeff Kubina.