Each and every day, Americans collectively fart between 2.5 and 6.3 billion times, unloading up to 466.7 million liters of gas into the atmosphere. Approximately 99% of an "anal gas evacuation" is composed of odorless gases, mostly hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and methane, along with smaller amounts of nitrogen and oxygen. The remaining 1% of compounds grant the fart its notorious scent. Hydrogen sulfide is the chief culprit.
A fart's life begins with food. After entering your mouth and traveling down the esophagus, a meal makes its way to the stomach to be digested and, soon after, the small intestine, where nutrients are absorbed. Some dregs, however, survive the acidic gauntlet and continue to the next leg of the journey: the large intestine. There, what began as a meal for you becomes a feast for resident bacteria. They ferment the leftover food, releasing gas in the process, gas which must be expelled.
Flatulence's omnipresence, smell, sound, and social stigma make it a frequently explored topic in popular culture. Men gathered around restaurant feasts of beer, buffalo wings, and nachos perform much of the experimentation and discussion. Scientists' contributions, while noteworthy, pale in comparison. Sure, they've calculated the average volume of a fart (between 5 and 375 millileters), identified two strains of bacteria to make beans "flatulence-free," and documented the causes of extreme flatulence, but they haven't characterized the magnificence and grandeur of a fart's flammability with anywhere near the precision of the common man equipped with a camera and a YouTube account.
With two new papers, one published in the journal Gut in June 2013, and the other just published to Neurogastroenterology and Motility, Spanish researcher Fernando Azpiroz takes the attention off of fart jokes (at least temporarily) and bolsters our scientific knowledge on passing gas.
Most recently, he tested how two different diets affected flatulence. For the longest time, experts have been recommending foods to reduce gassiness, but surprisingly, there actually hasn't been a study conducted that gauges how eating those foods affects the frequency of farting.
Until now, that is.
A fart's life begins with food. After entering your mouth and traveling down the esophagus, a meal makes its way to the stomach to be digested and, soon after, the small intestine, where nutrients are absorbed. Some dregs, however, survive the acidic gauntlet and continue to the next leg of the journey: the large intestine. There, what began as a meal for you becomes a feast for resident bacteria. They ferment the leftover food, releasing gas in the process, gas which must be expelled.Flatulence's omnipresence, smell, sound, and social stigma make it a frequently explored topic in popular culture. Men gathered around restaurant feasts of beer, buffalo wings, and nachos perform much of the experimentation and discussion. Scientists' contributions, while noteworthy, pale in comparison. Sure, they've calculated the average volume of a fart (between 5 and 375 millileters), identified two strains of bacteria to make beans "flatulence-free," and documented the causes of extreme flatulence, but they haven't characterized the magnificence and grandeur of a fart's flammability with anywhere near the precision of the common man equipped with a camera and a YouTube account.
With two new papers, one published in the journal Gut in June 2013, and the other just published to Neurogastroenterology and Motility, Spanish researcher Fernando Azpiroz takes the attention off of fart jokes (at least temporarily) and bolsters our scientific knowledge on passing gas.
Most recently, he tested how two different diets affected flatulence. For the longest time, experts have been recommending foods to reduce gassiness, but surprisingly, there actually hasn't been a study conducted that gauges how eating those foods affects the frequency of farting.
Until now, that is.
by Ross Pomeroy, RealClearScience | Read more:
Image: Shutterstock
