GOOD TO KNOW: THIS FOOD MAKES YOU FART

Say wine, snacks or haute cuisine and the gourmands at online food magazine FavorFlav know where to drink, how to eat it and what to cook. This time our cheffies serve you: farting from this kind of food.

Everyone farts 15 to 20 times a day, some people release more than 2 liters of gas into the atmosphere daily. All completely natural and healthy, but if you're somewhat forced to be cooped up together, it can be a bit less. Keep your mask on when salmon, chicken, or Brussels sprouts are on the menu.

Gas in your intestines sometimes comes from air that you have inadvertently swallowed, for example when you eat or drink hastily or chew gum. Most of the accidentally swallowed air you burp out, but sometimes it finds its way to the exit. These are usually odorless farts that drift away almost unnoticed.

And those stinkers? They usually have to do with food. Eating chicken, meat, and other animal proteins releases sulfur gases that smell like rotten eggs. Some people are extra sensitive to fruit, wheat, and sweeteners. These foods contain so-called short-chain sugars, which are not well absorbed in the small intestine and can cause trouble in the large intestine: a rumbling stomach, a bloated feeling, and yes, that infamous trouser cough.

Harvard University has researched: which food causes the most farts? Here is their list: food with glucose-fructose syrup, food with sulfur, carbonated drinks, and legumes cause the most gas problems. What exactly should you avoid?

1. Leave the sweet stuff alone
Glucose-fructose syrup is a sweet syrup made from corn. It is used to sweeten cheap food, so it is found in, for example, soft drinks, sports drinks, jam, and ketchup, but also in sweet dairy products like pudding and custard. It has a strong effect on the intestines, so as little as possible, thank you.

2. Away with the Brussels sprouts
Cabbage, spinach, and Brussels sprouts, as well as onions, cauliflower, and onions contain a lot of sulfur. That smells like rotten eggs and yes, if you eat a lot of sulfur-containing vegetables, you'll encounter that smell again. Also be careful with salmon, steak, Parmesan cheese, and cod.

3. Beer? Not here
Carbonated drinks like beer and cola cause extra air in your belly. The infamous beer farts are the result: sour farts that turn the whole room blue. Beer contains yeast, which eagerly goes to work in the large intestine with whatever it encounters there. Result: gas, a lot of gas. Also, a certain carbohydrate in beer is converted by bacteria in the large intestine into butyric acid, and that smells really awful...

4. Stinky beans
Peas, lentils, peanuts, and beans, all legumes have the same effect: trouble in the front, because they also contain carbohydrates that are not completely broken down and absorbed in the small intestine. In the large intestine, they ferment and that causes gas. Solution: cooking. The better the legumes are cooked, the better they are digestible. But even a good pea soup, which simmers for a day, can still strongly affect your intestines if you are sensitive to it.

Let them blow
Ben Witteman is a gastroenterologist specializing in nutrition and gut health. He advises: let the farts blow. ‘It feels good,’ he says in an interview with the Volkskrant. ‘Air in the intestines is annoying, but not dangerous. The intestines are not damaged by it.’ So away with the embarrassment, let it rip, but do step out onto the balcony if you want to keep it a bit cozy inside.