Chapoquoit 2021-10-02
On Farting
2021-10-03
Farting is not a topic that commonly comes up in polite conversations, but it has been the subject of intellectual curiosity for a long time. Recent scientific research and the centuries-old musings of an American Founding Father provide reasons to reconsider our unwillingness to talk about farting.
In an article dated September 6, 2021, in New Scientist Magazine, the writer Alice Klein discusses a scientific study that looked at the well-known link between eating a plant-based diet and generally better health at the expense of increased farting. A high-fiber plant diet promotes the growth of gut bacteria associated with improved health for different reasons. For example, these “good” bacteria produce “short-chain” fatty acids that protect against bowel cancer. The increased farting caused by a plant-based diet is an indication that the good gut bacteria are fermenting fiber and flourishing.
The details of how scientist Claudia Barber in Barcelona, Spain, did her study are intriguing. Study subjects (all men) recorded how many times a day they farted using a hand counter and found that they farted seven times more often while eating a plant-based diet than a “western diet.” And each fart contained 50% more gas than farts generated by western diets as measured by balloons attached to the men’s rectums. I struggled to get past the image of the pitiful research assistant assigned the task of placing these balloons.
It turns out that plant-based farts smell less offensive than meat-based farts because bacterial fermentation of plant fiber produces mostly odorless hydrogen and methane gas. In contrast, the fermentation of animal protein produces more smelly hydrogen sulfide gas.
Benjamin Franklin was also thinking about the relationship between diet and farting 240 years ago. As reported in the book Fart Proudly edited by Carl Japikse (copyright 1990), Franklin sent a satirical letter to the Royal Academy of Brusselles dated 1781 regarding research into bowel gas. In the letter, he urged the “Learned Physicians, Chemists, etc. of this enlightened age” to endeavor to discover a drug that when “mixed with our common food or sauces, shall render the natural discharges of wind from our bodies, not only inoffensive but as agreeable as perfumes.” Franklin even suggested how their research could be guided by what people already knew about how different foods affected the smell of farts. “He that dines on stale flesh, especially with much addition of onions, shall be able to afford a stink that no company can tolerate; while he that has lived for some time on vegetables only shall have that breath so pure as to be insensible to the most delicate noses.” Franklin explained that the relief brought by passing gas instead of suppressing it out of politeness was of such importance that their efforts to make it possible would be worth the time spent doing it.
These are the sort of things I think about when I’m just farting around taking pictures at the beach.
Monte