Indian Scientists Use Radiation to Cure Flatulence

["Philip Egidi" <phil.egidi@state.co.us>]

RADSTERS,

I saw this just now on Yahoo news and had to pass it on!  Please no

jokes as to whether this story stinks or not.

Phil Egidi





Indian Scientists Use Radiation to Cure Flatulence 

Wed Mar 27, 2:35 PM ET 



LONDON (Reuters) - Indian scientists have come up with a cure for

flatulence, by blasting guilty foodstuffs such as beans with gamma rays

to knock out the offending chemicals that cause the problem, New

Scientist magazine said on Wednesday. 



  

Bacteria in the large intestine are responsible for the gases that

cause flatulence, and when these bugs eat certain types of carbohydrate

called oligosaccharides they produce a mixture of methane and smelly

sulphurous gases, which cause the social embarrassment. 



The finger of blame is most commonly pointed at beans and vegetables,

60 percent of whose carbohydrates are made up of oligosaccharides. 



So Jammala Machaiah and Mrinal Pednekar in the food-science laboratory

at India's Bhabha Atomic Research Center in Trombay decided to see

whether small doses of radiation affected these carbohydrates in various

beans common in Indian cuisine. 



Using standard food treatment technology, they irradiated samples of

mung beans, chickpeas, black-eyed beans and red kidney beans with a

low-intensity gamma-ray, before giving the beans their standard two day

soak prior to cooking. 



The scientists, whose research will appear in the journal Food

Chemistry, found the irradiation dramatically accelerated a reduction in

oligosaccharides which occurs naturally in the soaking process, the

magazine said. 



After two days soaking, the levels of oligosaccharides in mung beans

had fallen by 70 percent, compared to a 35 percent reduction in

un-irradiated, but soaked, beans. 



Black-eyed beans and chickpeas also showed a marked fall but kidney

beans were found to hold stubbornly onto their oligosaccharides. 



"In India, beans are a very popular and important part of the national

diet, but some people can't eat a lot of beans because of the flatulence

problem," Machaiah said. 



"This is unfortunate as it is a very good source of essential

nutrients. Irradiation would make beans less of a problem." 



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