Do Vegetarians' Farts Smell Worse?

Not all flatulence is created equal -- your diet has a huge impact on the gas you pass. So whose farts are smellier: vegetarians or omnivores?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain stuff from how stuff works. Hey, they're
brain stuff, Lauren Vogel bomb here. It's as Bart Simpson
once said, beans beans the musical fruit. The more you eat,
the more you toot. Beans have a reputation as a
musical fruit, But for all their noisiness, they don't usually
make farts smell worse. The same is true for most

(00:23):
flatulens causing foods, such as asparagus or chickpeas. They may
make you fart more often, but they don't make your
farts particularly stinky. Sure, a vegetarians diet based on nuts, fruit, vegetables,
and lagoons is rich in fiber, but fiber alone is
not to blame for the increased gas production that comes
with plant based eating habits. The culprit is actually a

(00:44):
type of sugar molecule called oligo saccharides. Oligo saccharides are
too large to be easily absorbed through the wall of
the small intestine, so they move through the large intestines
unfettered until they meet some of these seventy plus kinds
of bacteria that live there. As these bacteria east on
the all ego saccharides, they create an abundance of gassy byproducts.

(01:04):
Colloquially speaking, the bacteria fart and you fart out their farts.
While the jury is still out on weather vegetarians fart
more often than omnivores. There is evidence that vegetarian farts
may be among the least noxious, or not as noxious
as a meat eaters farts. Anyway, the credit for smelly
farts goes in part to meat that is consumed as

(01:25):
part of an omnivorous diet. For the most part, meat
contains high levels of sulfur and sulfur. Latin foods produce
more odors as they're digested. When bacteria in the digestive
system break down foods, it produces all kinds of byproducts
when they break down foods rich in sulfur. The byproducts
include sulfides and mercantons, the gases that lend their unmistakable

(01:46):
smell to farts. Hydrogen sulfide in particular, causes past gas
to have an odor reminiscent of rotten eggs. The other
gases produced during digestion, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, oxygen, and methane,
are virtually odorless. By contrast, most vegetables produce fewer smelly byproducts.
During digestion. But don't think that if you don't eat
meat you'll never have smelly farts. Any food that is

(02:09):
high in sulfites, such as cabbage, broccoli, onions, brussels sprouts, peas, leaks,
and garlic, will result in sulfide and mercatin rich gas production.
So even though omnivores and vegetarians may not have much
in common when it comes to selecting a main dish
off the menu, they can raise their forks and unity
at the wonders of gut bacteria. Regardless of what we eat,

(02:30):
we all fart, and sometimes it's smellier because of what
we've eaten. Today's episode was written by Laurie L. Dove
and produced by Tristan McNeil. For more on this and
lots of other completely dignified topics, visit our home planet,
how stuff Works dot com