Beans make you gassy because they carry sugars your body can't digest, so the bacteria in your gut eat them and make gas. Your gut isn't broken. It's working. Look, I've watched a lot of tides come in from this end of the bar, and the one after beans comes in right on schedule.
Neither you nor any other animal makes the enzyme for certain sugars in beans, says a paper in Frontiers in Plant Science. An enzyme is the little cutting tool your body uses to chop food small enough to take in. You showed up to the job without that one.
So those sugars ride on through, undigested, into your large intestine, where bacteria break them down and make gas, as the NIDDK at the NIH explains. The bacteria ferment them, which is a fancy way of saying they eat your leftovers and give off hydrogen, methane and carbon dioxide, the gases that same Frontiers paper names. Your gut's not slacking. It's outsourcing.
Is something wrong with you? Probably not. The NHS says everyone farts, some people more than others, and the NIDDK says some gas is normal, especially during or after meals. Nobody's asking you to keep score.
And if you're keeping score anyway, the NIDDK says experts call up to 25 times a day normal. You've got room.
Now the part I like. In a bean study in the Nutrition Journal, seventy percent or more of the people who got gassy felt it faded by the second or third week, and the authors say worries about bean gas may be exaggerated. That's people saying how it felt, not a promise. But it's a lot of people saying it.
If your farting worries you, see a GP and don't self-diagnose, the NHS says. A search bar is not a doctor.
So that tide coming in on you? It's not a flood. Keep the beans coming for two or three weeks, and you may find the tide comes in quieter.
