No one person has claimed rights to this literary gem, “Beans, beans, they’re good for your heart. The more you eat, the more you fart.”
Some time in the 1600s, though, people began creating haughty, naughty little rhyming couplets to place on lavatory and brothel walls instead of the usual “Ivon woz ‘ere,” and “Georgina’s my gal.”
Believe it or not, the “Beans, beans” poem originated from this seventeenth-century collection of graffiti.
Like any oral history, it has changed form over the years into the rhyme every nine-year-old school kid knows and loves today.
There are many variations, but here’s a common one:
Beans, beans, they’re good for your heart, The more you eat, the more you fart.
The more you fart, the better you feel, So eat those beans at every meal.
And beans will definitely make you break wind. They contain certain sugars called oligosaccharides that have a large molecular structure. In plain English that means they don’t get digested very well in the small intestine, leaving lots of chunks for colonies of bacteria to chow down on.
Fruits, whole grains, and vegetables do the same thing. The bacteria in the intestines multiply when they have a lot to eat, and this process produces gas.
The gas has to go somewhere, or you’ll explode like a cockroach, and that would just be gross.
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