What is the commonality among sweet potatoes, persimmons, baked beans, cauliflower and onions?
 
We’ll come to the point -these foods make you fart! It can be the thunderous but odourless sort, or the silent with and nasty stink. In any case, both embarrass you in public.
 
What these foods have in common is indigestible or excess carbohydrates that are not broken down in the stomach or small intestine. But the colon’s bacteria relish them, and produce gases as a result. If methane is the end product your fart will be untraceable, polite even. But if it’s hydrogen sulfide, the gas you pass out will be a potential weapon of mass destruction!
 
The type of gas you produce depends on the combinationof bacteria you have in your gut. Hence, some people are just more prone to producing air-borne toxic.
 
So, have a good look at the following food and make sure you avoid them before an important date. Alternatively, slide it across the table to your companion…
 
Sweet potatoes
 
Oh that Japanese roasted sweet potato (yaki-imo) is so soft and subtly sweet but it gives you more wind than you’d like. The main culprit here is the carbohydrate.
 

 
Baked beans
 
Same goes for baked beans. It contains polysaccharides (long carbohydrate structure) that the lower intestine bacteria love to feed on, producing extra gas. Good thing is, people usually eat baked beans for breakfast and at home, so the embarrassing moments can be kept private.
 

 
Onions
 
We are looking at a simple sugar called fructose here. It is hard to absorb in the intestine so it passes straight through to the bowel where it is fermented by the bacteria to produce gas.
 

 
Cauliflower
 
The main culprit here is a complex sugar called raffinose, which is also found in cabbages and broccolis. Our guts do not have the necessary enzyme to break it down, and so the job is left to the bowel bacteria armed with fork and knife.
 

 
Persimmons 
 
For some reason mothers love this fruit but the fruit sugar (fructose) it contains make them an object of ridicule. Luckily, we hardly find them in local dishes.