Fumes from Legumes

Tooting Broadway

There's a Tube station in London called Tooting Broadway. While I think this is insanely funny, my British friends are a bit perplexed. Apparently "tooting" in Britain does not mean the same as "tooting" in Canada. A rose by any other name... We could call it farting, trumping (oh, good one!), passing gas, breaking wind... you name it... we all do it... even (gasp) on planes!

It's a completely natural process and, as we all know, the quality and quantity of our gas discharges is shaped, to a large extent, by what we eat. Chinese food, for example, produces some really toxic discharges. At least for me. Apparently my little gut microbiome critters have a field day with chow mein and MSG!

Ah yes, our gut microbiome. Studies are beginning to show that it plays a  bigger role in our overall health than we ever imagined. The health of our little gut bacteria could even influence our mood and  mental health. Fascinating stuff. We really are what we eat.

Pretty tooting

Making the shift from a carnivorous eating plan to a whole-foods, plant-based eating plan has had its moments. As we eased animal proteins out of our diet and upped our intake of plant-based foods, we naturally increased our fiber intake. Now, while we can't digest fiber in our stomachs and small intestines... fiber does feed bacteria in our colon... which has all sorts of beneficial implications for our health. Most of us only eat about 15 grams of fiber a day when we should be eating double, triple or even quadruple that (but that's another blog post).

Sooo... we made a pretty abrupt transition from being happy meat eaters to happy plant eaters and... in that process... we went through the Bacteria Wars. My nutritionist warned me that this might happen, but that it would be temporary... "only a couple of weeks". She said that my gut microbiome would be shifting from one in which animal-protein processing bacteria held the upper hand to one in which fiber-processing bacteria took over. As we increased the fiber and cut off the animal protein... well... it got nasty.

I experienced some really bad bloating and tooting. Like... bad. Fiber munching bacteria produce gas as a by-product and with LOTS of fiber to eat... my gut bacteria had a field day. I had bad gas pain as the bubbles tried to work their way through my system, followed by not-so-pretty farting. It seemed that every time I introduced some new item to my diet, I'd go through a spate of it. One day it was broccoli that triggered bloating and trumping... but then, two days later, broccoli would be fine. Then I'd have cauliflower and... go through it all over again. Two days later cauliflower was fine.

It was definitely a transition period but drinking copious amounts of water definitely helped. And, several weeks into it now, I can safely say that the painful bloating and trumping is behind me. So far. Fingers crossed.

I do have to admit that... for a while there, I was almost ready to toss in the towel and scream "I'm not meant to eat legumes!". I stuck with it though and now my happy fiber munching bacteria are working with me, instead of against me. I honestly didn't know that it would be a temporary problem... I just thought that eating legumes would always lead to breaking wind... but such is not the case. Anyone else find that they avoid legumes because of the trumping issue?