Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!ub!kitty!larry
From: larry@kitty.UUCP (Larry Lippman)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Vulgar inquiry (*BLATTT*)
Summary: Beans, Beans, the Musical Fruit... :-)
Keywords: beans, flatulence, oligosaccharides, enzymes
Message-ID: <4983@kitty.UUCP>
Date: 24 May 91 17:21:02 GMT
References: <1806@anaxagoras.ils.nwu.edu>
Followup-To: sci.bio
Organization: Recognition Research Corp., Clarence, NY
Lines: 29

In article <1806@anaxagoras.ils.nwu.edu> barger@aristotle.ils.nwu.edu (Jorn Barger) writes:
>Settle a bet here: The local health food store is now carrying a pricey
>little bottle of enzymes called "Beano" that you dripple onto your baked
>beans etc, to prevent... flatulence. (Beg pardon!)  Now I remember hearing
>somewhere that the sugars in beans, etc were indigestible because they
>were stereoisomers/mirror images of the usual sugars.  My pal-who-hasn't-
>won-one-yet says nature abhors an enantiomorph, and that no biological
>molecule exists in nature in both forms.  Anybody know for sure?

	Beans contain significant quantities of oligosaccharides, which
cannot be directly absorbed by the small intestine without the aid of
enzymes.  In general, without enzymes humans cannot digest oligosaccharides
and polysaccharides of a form other than with a-1,4 linkages.  Sucrose,
as an example, cannot undergo absorption without the aid of the enzyme
sucrase, which catalyzes its hydrolysis to d-glucose.

	Excess oligosaccharides (which do not undergo hydrolysis as above)
as found in beans undergo fermentation in the small intestine, producing
carbon dioxide and hydrogen as gaseous products.  These gaseous products
form the basis for flatus.  Since the ability of humans to produce the
enzymes necessary for oligosaccharide hydrolysis varies, consumption of
beans has a different effect in different people.

	The "Beano" product probably contains such enzymes as sucrase,
maltase, isomaltase, etc.

Larry Lippman @ Recognition Research Corp.  "Have you hugged your cat today?"
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