Question: I made a roasted cauliflower dish with chickpeas the other night. The next-day effects were loud, dramatic and constant. And not just wind, but “cleansing” of the bowel, too. This never happens for me with hummus. Does your gut start to rebel when you’re older, and foods you’ve never had a problem with become so? Is the answer to avoid these foods, or is it better to persevere because of their nutritional value and just put up with the side effects?
Answer: Laughed about or grumbled about – we all do it between three and 40 times a day. Yet flatus, as it’s technically known, is not often talked about. So, why would a delicious meal of cauliflower and chickpeas cause excessive flatus and diarrhoea?
We pass 400-2000ml of flatus daily, according to the British Society of Gastroenterology. About 90% of flatus comprises five gases: nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, hydrogen and methane, with the remaining 10% consisting of other gases. The average person passes wind 15 times a day.
Several age-related changes in the gastrointestinal system can affect digestion – typically, the digestive system slows down and becomes less efficient, which may lead to problems such as constipation. Although anecdotally there are reports that older adults experience more flatus, studies have typically found the opposite: older adults produce less gas. If you think your flatus may be excessive, try counting every time you break wind for a day or two (including even the smallest ones). Anything less than 40 times a day is considered normal, even if it feels excessive.
However, diet does affect how much wind we produce, as most gas is generated from bacteria fermenting certain food residues in our colon. A high-fibre diet, for example, is terrific for our health and wellbeing but produces much flatus. Fibre-rich foods such as beans, onions, garlic and cruciferous vegetables such as cabbage, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts, in particular, will give your gut microflora a boost thanks to their healthful fibre content, which the bacteria ferment and then produce gas. Beans, including chickpeas, also have a notorious reputation: “Beans are good for the heart; the more you eat, the more you …”
So, the dinner you made from cauliflower and chickpeas was a double-dare on the bowel front, as both foods contain fibre and other compounds renowned for producing gas. Further, some of those compounds attract water into the bowel, so eating large quantities of these foods can result in diarrhoea and “gusty winds” for some people.
People with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) can find certain foods particularly problematic, causing symptoms such as bloating, pain, discomfort, wind, diarrhoea or constipation.
The development of the low fodmap diet has offered an invaluable tool for the management of IBS symptoms. Fodmap stands for fermentable oligo-, di- and mono-saccharides and polyols, a term used to describe groups of short-chain carbohydrates with similar properties that draw water from the body into the gut. Bacteria rapidly ferment these carbohydrates, thus producing gases. Both cauliflower and chickpeas contain significant quantities of fodmaps.
IBS patients typically work through an elimination diet that avoids fodmap-rich foods, before reintroducing different groups of them in small amounts to determine which ones they can tolerate and which they may need to avoid altogether.
The good news is you can maintain a healthy, high-fibre diet without the risk of excessive gas or diarrhoea (in the absence of IBS or other diseases). First, start by slowly increasing the quantity of high-fibre foods in your diet to give your body time to adjust to digesting greater amounts of fermentable compounds. Second, you can always avoid the worst dietary gas offenders: try eating less cabbage, beans, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, turnips, onions, garlic, leeks and certain seeds such as fennel, sunflower and poppy. If diarrhoea persists, or you’re experiencing any other symptoms or ongoing excessive gas, visit your GP or gastroenterologist.
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