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Can you stop beans from making you gassy?
- rand846633 5mo agoNice read! For the impatient: they found no common cooking technique that helped significantly reduce - as they call it the “fartyness” of the beans..
- mstank 5mo agoI always found it I eat them consistently, they would make me less gassy. But only after a couple of weeks.
- addaon 5mo agoYep. Rancho Gordo bean club member here — when I transitioned from “beans are okay but a lot of work to make a way I enjoy” to “I should make an effort to try a new recipe every two or four weeks”… it took about a month for my stomach to normalize the assault, but now it’s no different than anything with fiber.
- plufz 5mo agoYeah, I eat beans all the time and don’t have any reaction to them. Anecdata but in my experience only people who eat very little beans react to them. But I haven’t researched it.
- jghn 5mo agoFellow Rancho Gordo bean clubber and I saw the same thing. If I really go hard, like eating them with every meal for most of a week I'll notice it building up but otherwise not really.
- shermantanktop 5mo agoThe first rule of bean club is to tell everyone about bean club. Rancho Gordo beans are great! Yellow Eyes ftw.
- insaneirish 5mo agoSteve Sando, the founder/owner of Rancho Gordo, has been on the podcast (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cooking-issues-with-dave-arnold/id1572356745 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cooking-issues-with-da...) hosted by the author of this article (Dave Arnold) a few times. Those episodes are really fun and always result in me eating more beans!
- tmoertel 5mo agoI was surprised they didn't try sprouting the beans before cooking. When a bean germinates, it converts sugars in storage forms to more usable forms. Given that the author seems to understand that gassiness is caused by being unable to digest FODMAPs, sprouting to reduce gassiness seems like an obvious hypothesis to test.
- azinman2 5mo agoHow does one do that? Does it change the flavor / texture?
- VladVladikoff 5mo agoThere are lots of sprouting tutorials on YouTube. I used mason jars, soak the seeds for an hour or two, drain and leave the seeds in the jar damp. Rinse the seeds twice a day. Eventually they start to sprout.
- spike021 5mo agoMany years ago at a science-y summer camp as a child, this was a "project" we did. Not for the same purpose as suggested here but just to see how sprouting happens. Cool little experiment.
- nchmy 5mo agoI just did it in the past few days. Soak overnight in any container you want. Drain. Rinse it a couple times a day until sprouts form. Maybe a few days. I usually wait a few more so the sprouts are a few cm/one inch long.
- cassianoleal 5mo agoIME, at least with black beans, overnight is enough. You don’t need to see the actual sprouts, you just need to kickstart the process. It doesn’t change the taste, and you can control the texture by how long you cook them. Soaking also means it takes less time to cook. Source: Brazilian who grew up eating black beans several times a week because it’s the number 1 staple there. Usually served in a creamy bean sauce and white rice for the full range of BCAAs - not that I understood that then, it was just delicious.
- insaneirish 5mo agoIf you are unfamiliar with the author, Dave Arnold is a former instructor at the French Culinary Institute, a bar owner/operator in NYC (Booker & Dax (closed), Existing Conditions (closed), and Bar Contra (https://www.barcontra.com https://www.barcontra.com)), a cooking equipment designer and manufacturer (https://www.bookeranddax.com https://www.bookeranddax.com), sharer of lots of knowledge (e.g. https://cookingissues.com/primers/sous-vide/part-i-introduction-to-low-temperature-cooking-and-sous-vide/ https://cookingissues.com/primers/sous-vide/part-i-introduct...), James Beard Award winning book author (https://www.kitchenartsandletters.com/products/liquid-intelligence-the-art-and-science-of-the-perfect-cocktail https://www.kitchenartsandletters.com/products/liquid-intell...), and a weekly podcast host (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cooking-issues-with-dave-arnold/id1572356745 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cooking-issues-with-da...). I highly recommend anything he works on.
- Aboutplants 5mo agoI just want to dap this comment about Dave Arnold. If you’re a nerd (science nerd) who likes food then Dave is your guy. His podcast is great and if you want to blow away your next Thanksgiving meal, find his stuffing recipe.
- satvikpendem 5mo agoI'd also recommend Chris Young on YouTube who also uses science based rather than tradition based methods of modern cooking, such as making a consomme without lots of effort as French chefs would tell you to do. https://youtube.com/@ChrisYoungCooks https://youtube.com/@ChrisYoungCooks
- locallost 5mo agoThere is an old New York Times article (90s) that makes the same conclusion. The only real way to reduce the issue is to eat then more often. Personally never had big issues with beans. What's far worse for me is anything with a high inulin content. I feel physical pain from bloating when eating that.
- burnt-resistor 5mo agoThere are always options. Beano also exists and it works.
- blackjack_ 5mo agoYes. You just eat beans a lot. After a few months it stops making you gassy until you eat a type of bean you have never eaten before and then you are back to square one. Source: vegan who eats beans with 75+% of meals
- krackers 5mo ago>After a few months it stops making you gassy What causes this? Gut microbiome adapting? Doesn't that imply there should be some probiotic-type supplement you can take to seed these bacteria and keep them alive even when not eating beans?
- shermantanktop 5mo agoYMMV and people differ. Source: vegetarian who eats a lot of beans too. Beanzyme is a lifesaver.
- blackjack_ 5mo agoYeah, people are diverse. I have this issue with lentils. I love em, but however many I eat they don’t love me back.
- littlexsparkee 5mo agoDo you rinse them until the water runs clear before cooking them?
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- Jarmsy 5mo agoDisappointed not to see any mention of epazote.
- zanellato19 5mo agoIt's a Portuguese article, but a well known thing in Brazil to leave them in water https://www.nationalgeographicbrasil.com/ciencia/2024/10/voce-deve-deixar-o-feijao-de-molho-antes-de-cozinha-lo-descubra-o-que-a-ciencia-diz https://www.nationalgeographicbrasil.com/ciencia/2024/10/voc...
- NicuCalcea 5mo agoThe article mentions they tested this, and it didn't work.
- manoDev 5mo ago> These tests blew me away. At the very least, I expected that presoaking the beans and pitching the water would reduce fartiness. After all, the sugars are water soluble, so they should leach into the soaking water and get discarded. As it turns out, not so much. I still don’t understand this result. I don’t buy it. He’s says it doesn’t work but can’t explain why it didn’t work. Could be his method was faulty, the type of bean, the age of the bean, etc. I rather take the experience of an entire country.
- NicuCalcea 5mo agoNot to dismiss the experience of Brazil, but Korea believed you would die if you had an electric fan on with no windows open. Safe to say entire countries are not infallible either.
- locao 5mo agoBrazilian here. It's not a superstition, I can see my wife's belly literally inflate if the process is not done correctly. I cook beans at least once a week, I've made mistakes and there's no way to hide it. We don't get them cooked from delivery as we don't know how they were prepared, lesson also learned the hard way. That said, the process is soaking the beans in water for, at least, 10 hours. You have to change the water four or five times during this period and toss the water at the end. On the other hand, adding bay leaves are totally a superstition. Saw my mother-in-law trying to hide she forgot to soak the beans overnight by adding bay leaves and my wife had a bad aftermath.
- balupton 5mo agoThere are digestive enzymes on the market that solve digestive gas for beans, legumes, lentils, peanuts, broccoli, etc. You take one or a few at your first bite, and problem solved. Bean-zyme is the most popular in the US apparently. Vegan and international options are NOW's Optimal Digestive System, Bulk, California Gold's Digestive Enzymes, and Bulk's Digezymes. Your mileage may vary.
- sincerely 5mo agoThis is exhaustively covered in the article
- Schlagbohrer 5mo agoTry Asafoetida powder (Hing root powder), just a tiny pinch with bean or lentil dishes.
- tptacek 5mo agoWhy would that work?
- yumraj 5mo agoAsafoetida/Hing[0] is widely used in Indian cuisine and it does help, anecdotal evidence of course. How/why it works, is something I can't say. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asafoetida https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asafoetida also talks about this
- littlexsparkee 5mo agoFennel / saunf is a good carminative as well, hence its regular appearance at Indian restaurants as Mukhwas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukhwas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukhwas
- hypertexthero 5mo ago> These tests blew me away. Made me laugh : )
- ramses0 5mo agoI'm surprised they didn't test another northeastern U.S. folk remedy: only put a maximum of 239 beans in whatever you're cooking (otherwise ther'll be two-fahrty!). Hyuk hyuk hyuk! :-D
- kopadudl 5mo agoWhy would you? Farting is the pinnacle of comedy.
- hoppyhoppy2 5mo agoMy own as-yet-unpublished research suggests that some cultures frown upon excessive comedy in the workplace.
- WJW 5mo agoBut what if those cultures are just objectively wrong? Farts are hilarious after all.
- hoppyhoppy2 5mo agoEarly results indicate that the ears say yes, but the nose says no.
- konfusinomicon 5mo agocan confirm. worked in a very small office with a guy who didn't give a damn. silent but deadly doesnt do it justice. between that, a single bathroom right across from the secretaries desk (the unfortunate lady she was), and the sound of coworkers breathing, it was unbearable to say the least
- polishdude20 5mo agoIf I ly excessive gas didn't cause crazy painful cramps for me.
- christkv 5mo agoHmm too bad he did not try out the method I use which is soaking in water with a bit of baking soda. You got to rinse the beans well before cooking them. Would be interesting to know if it really makes a difference on the gas. It does on the skin though making them much softer.
- howlin 5mo agoI'm a vegan so experienced bean eater. There are a couple things I found that help, but they do come at a cost of flavor or texture: Soak and rinse, but the soak water should be boiling when the dry beans go in. Alkaline. Sodium Carbonate (baking soda) or calcium hydroxide (lime) work. Throw away the cooking water. This has to be done carefully, as too much of either can give the food a mineral taste and/or dissolve the beans entirely. Fermentation also works. Lactic acid (like kimchee or pickles) helps a little. Koji (either added or grown on the beans themselves) helps a lot. Both will have a big impact on the flavor and what the beans will be good for in the end.
- aziaziazi 5mo agoRhizopus oligosporus (tempeh) worlds pretty well too! What’s koji?
- badc0ffee 5mo agoThe moldy rice used to ferment soybeans into soy sauce, and to make sake.
- b00ty4breakfast 5mo ago>Sodium Carbonate (baking soda) I assume you meant Bicarbonate? Washing soda is pretty heavy duty and I've always used 1/4 tsp bicarb/lb of dry beans for dealing with old beans that won't soften the old fashioned way without any problems. You can also add the bicarb to the soaking water if making dry beans. Discard and rinse, as usual.
- PeterHolzwarth 5mo agoI'm not very familiar with this topic. What is the chemical mechanism through which you feel that baking soda reduces undigestible sugars in beans?
- globular-toast 5mo agoWhy would having the soak water boiling help? And why would it reduce flavour or texture?
- ambientenv 5mo agoI find these discussions both entertaining and annoying. We humans unquestionably expect to be able to bend the world to our will, even when the “world” is defined by some arbitrary set of rules put forth by some faction whose intent is solely to serve their own purposes, desires, and needs, independent of a shared reality. Legumes, among other things, make you fart. Get over it.
- manbash 5mo agoI tend to find it in the spirit of "hacking".
- aziaziazi 5mo agoOn could say that grains are indigestible, leather rot and oil doesn’t explode… but we manage to cook, taw and distil. Why wouldn’t we also soak/germinated/ferment/peel the beans ?
- gessha 5mo agoIt’s human nature to come up with ways to bend the world to our will. If you got over things, humans would’ve stayed at their initial habits and maybe perished with climate change.
- daneel_w 5mo agoSomething quite acidic after the meal works great for me. I prefer a small glass of water with two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar. It's not tasty but it's just one quick swig, and as a bonus fermented beverages/foods are very beneficial.
- Heston 5mo agoThere are actual real solutions to this. Just look to the older cultures that ate lots of beans. In many parts of Africa the ultimate solution is to peal the skins off the beans. This removes all digestive issues with bean consumption but it's a lot of work. Another solution is to uses the microbe Aspergillus by consuming Miso paste with the beans which help break down indigestible polysaccharides.
- PeterHolzwarth 5mo agoIn regards to the first method, are you saying that the skins of beans are the majority source of undigestible sugars in beans? <edit> actually, come to think of it, fiber is also a source of gas. Are the skins of beans the higher source of fiber?
- novafacing 5mo agoYour username is incredibly relevant for a food science discussion!
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- dsego 5mo agoNot related to beans, but I had serious issues with bloating, gas and bad smell comparable to sewage. It went on for years until I had a short massage to adjust my stomach, the lady was pushing and shifting things around. This was a few months ago. Ever since I haven't had that type of gas, and I burp now which I haven't for years. I didn't change my diet at all.
- TurdF3rguson 5mo agoAre you a Batman villain by any chance?
- thisislife2 5mo agoWas this a normal body massage, where they also worked on your stomach or specifically a massage for the stomach promising a cure for your specific issues?
- xeromal 5mo agoSounds like the massage moved his intestines around
- thisislife2 5mo agoI understood that. Just wanted to know if the masseuse specifically pitched the idea to OP, after hearing his complaint or whether it was just a happy co-incidence.
- dsego 5mo agoIt's a specific alternative therapy, a traditional practice associated with adjusting or repositioning the stomach in folk healing. The woman who performed this on me is a physiotherapist.
- thisislife2 5mo agoThanks for clarifying it - does this alternative therapy have a name?
- dyauspitr 5mo agoYes. Black mustard, asaefotida and fenugreek.
- burnt-resistor 5mo agoAs mentioned in the article, alpha galactosidase supplements like Beano exist.
- yegle 5mo agoIt looks like more and more websites star using html-load.com to circumvent DNS ad blocking like PiHole and Adguard Home, like this one.
- Worf 5mo ago[dead]
- scythe 5mo ago>Here I feel the need for an aside. Many, many people will tell you that the key to reducing bean gas is to eat more beans. Eating more beans, they argue, works because it allows our digestive systems, and the microbiome in them, to acclimate to the beans. Over time, they say, the gassiness will go down. This makes no sense to me. If these oligosaccharides are food for bacteria in our gut, common sense would say that feeding that bacteria more food would, if anything, do the opposite by supporting their population growth while giving them plenty of raw material to digest. It wasn't within the scope of this project to test (and, I suspect, disprove) this theory, but count me as highly doubtful. If anything, I have to imagine that eating more beans more often just makes people more used to being gassy, and that, in turn, makes them notice it less. (Their significant others might have a very different take…) I agree with this in principle but have to point out a few flaws in practice. First, the immediate product of fermentation is not methane, despite what your high school biology teacher told you. It's hydrogen. In fact, bacteria do not produce methane at all! Only archaea are capable of methanogenesis. This is a rather surprising fact nobody mentioned in school: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanogenesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanogenesis >Organisms capable of producing methane for energy conservation have been identified only from the domain Archaea, a group phylogenetically distinct from both eukaryotes and bacteria, although many live in close association with anaerobic bacteria. So there is some room for error here. When methanogenesis occurs, the volume of gas is reduced by 80%: 4 H2 + CO2 >> CH4 + 2 H2O (l) But I have never seen any evidence that the amount of archaea or the extent of methanogenesis in the digestive tract varies with diet. However, it does change under certain circumstances, and more methane in enteric gas is generally correlated with less hydrogen: https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/bmfh/45/1/45_2025-044/_article/-char/ja/ https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/bmfh/45/1/45_2025-044/_... >However, methane gas production was not changed by dietary intake, suggesting that intervention with prebiotics may be necessary. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1752-7155/7/2/024001/meta https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1752-7155/7/2/024... >Usually patients produce either hydrogen or methane, and only rarely there are significant co-producers, as typically the methane is produced at the expense of hydrogen by microbial conversion of carbon dioxide. Various studies show that methanogens occur in about a third of all adult humans (The second study is less optimistic than I am about methanogens reducing intestinal discomfort.) But there is another thing that can change the amount of noticeable farting: unnoticeable farting. The digestive tract has its own nervous subsystem which reacts to stimuli and processes information. It's plausible that if you produce a lot of gas for a long time, your digestive tract learns to let it out gently. This may reduce irritation of the epithelium.
- notepad0x90 5mo agoGiven the bacterial digestion context here, I wonder how consistent bean consumption affects the gut microbiome? Others have mentioned eating beans a lot is the best way to stop the gas, why is that? is it because the bacteria that digest the indigestible substance are well-hardened and numerous (I'd expect more, not less gas, but perhaps it has to do with the digestive efficiency resulting in less "bubbles" of air that make an audible sound?), or is it because those bacteria die off after being overworked, and you just pass on the indigestible substance unprocessed?
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- dryheat3 5mo agoI consume legumes daily and found that using baking soda completely eliminated gaseous emissions from them. For lentils, I soak 20 g in water with 1/4 tsp baking soda for a hour. Then discard the liquid before cooking. For refried black beans I first bring 65 g of beans to simmer then add 1/4 tsp baking soda and stir briskly. Once I implemented this protocol I found that onions and prunes were also causing gas. Seems any stone fruit gives me gas because this also happens with apricots. I haven’t found a way to fix the stone fruit. But the onions can be fixed by heating them with lime juice before consuming. Hope that helps.
- soperj 5mo agoYou're almost pickling them in citrus at that point.
- dryheat3 5mo agoPretty much, yep. The point is to neutralize the indigestible sugars through chemical or enzymatic action. So there should be a solution to any given type of food which causes gas. Just need to find the right trigger. Side note… Fermentation is a technique humans used for millennia, but modern technology has replaced that with methods that fail to neutralize those indigestible elements. So I also use lacto fermentation on various foods.
- BikiniPrince 5mo agoDo you notice any flavor profile changes?
- dryheat3 5mo agoThey become much darker in color but I have not noticed a change in flavor. I discovered this technique from an episode of America’s Test Kitchen on PBS.
- erelong 5mo ago"No so I just eat more meat instead"
- shchess 5mo ago[dead]
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- ksherlock 5mo agoA trick I learned in Ireland is to carefully count out your beans and stop when you hit 239. Because 1 more would be too farty.
- Der_Einzige 5mo agoBean counters shit on everything they touch.
- mittsquinter 5mo agoI smell what you did there.
- xivzgrev 5mo ago"The liquid in the bean can has many more farts per gram than the beans themselves do"
- ctoa 5mo agoAbout 50% of people just don't get gassy from beans to begin with, and 70% of those who do adapt within weeks, according to https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51819295_Perceptions_of_flatulence_from_bean_consumption_among_adults_in_3_feeding_studies https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51819295_Perception... My casual observation is that people's perception of bean's gas causing properties is way out of line with what they do for most people and strongly influenced by people who have unusually high intolerance, who are the minority. A part of the article that irked me is where he talks about why he's going to ignore people who say you get used to it because he thinks the microbiome change doesn't make sense misunderstands the gas/bacteria process in the gut. There is a big mix of FODMAP eating bacteria, both inefficient generalists that can eat FODMAP but do it poorly and create a lot of gas, but also specialist bacteria like Bifidobacterium that also eat them but are much more efficient at it and produce much less gas. With more food the specialist bacteria becomes more prevalent. There are also gas consuming bacteria, not just gas producing, which also will shift in population. The idea is not that you just grow a larger population of the existing problematic bacteria.
- saghm 5mo ago> My casual observation is that people's perception of bean's gas causing properties is way out of line with what they do for most people and strongly influenced by people who have unusually high intolerance, who are the minority. I would not be shocked if they're also influenced by knowing a catchy rhyme describing the purported effects on an individual who consumes them.
- adrian_b 5mo agoWhen I was young, I never got gassy, regardless of what I was eating and how much I was eating. But at one time I was forced to take antibiotics orally for a rather long time. After that, eating anything like beans resulted in copious amounts of gas, so it was obvious that the composition of the bacteria community in my guts had been changed. After many years, the reactions to beans and the like have diminished, but I have never reverted to the condition from before that exposure to antibiotics.
- arthurofbabylon 5mo agoWow, no mention of asafoetida (hing)?
- ofrzeta 5mo agoTraditionally in many cuisines cumin or caraway seeds are added to dishes such as beans or cabbage for this reason.
- justinclift 5mo agoWonder if they should have tried some seaweed based approaches as well? As per: https://phys.org/news/2026-04-seaweed-compound-major-methane-beef.html https://phys.org/news/2026-04-seaweed-compound-major-methane...
- globular-toast 5mo agoI've eaten lots of things in my life. I'm vegetarian now and I'm often eating 30+ different plants in a day. My experience is any "new" food or a big change in ratios/quantity of a food has the potential for flatulence. The worst gas I got was when I upped my protein to ridiculous quantities for the bodybuilding hobby. I eat beans all the time and they don't cause me any problems at all. But occasionally some vegetable will cause me excessive flatulence. It's part of vegetarian life really. Stick around any herbivores long enough and you'll know about their farts.
- whyage 5mo agoAs a vegan who consumes plenty of legumes, I researched the topic and found this useful patent: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/88/c7/d6/daddb5392c0b77/US6238725.pdf https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/88/c7/d6/daddb53... I boiled it down to the following steps (pun intended): 1. Rinse the beans. 2. Soak for several hours in room-temperature water, replacing the water 2-3 times. 3. Soak for several hours in ~130°F water, replacing the water 2-3 times (I use Yogurt mode on my Instant Pot, as it lets you set a temperature and hold it for hours). 4. Cook'em as you normally would. Cooked beans freeze well, so I usually make large batches and freeze them in Ziplock bags for later use.
- littlexsparkee 5mo agoInteresting, 130f appears to trigger the enzymes to break down oligosaccharides and anti-nutrients - thanks for sharing
- giannicmptr1000 5mo agoSometimes after I eat beans I feel like I'm dying, but they're especially good in any tortilla, so it's definitely worth it.