Bloated Stomach Relief

While many of us like to blame the lowly bean for our bloated stomach problems, in reality it is our heavy reliance on processed fast foods that really causes most of us to feel both bloated and sluggish. Instead of blaming the beans, you should instead be looking at other aspects of your diet and examine if you are consuming the right kinds of foods together in order to more efficiently metabolize and digest them.

It is all about the digestive enzymes

In all actuality, beans and other gassy culprits such as broccoli are high in dietary fiber and can actually help relieve gas provided that you eat them with foods that contain the right type of digestive enzymes to help break them down. For every major type of substrate (i.e. proteins, fats, carbohydrates, cellulose) there is a digestive enzyme needed to break it down. In the case of beans to also eat foods that are high in cellulose to help break down the fiber as well as proteases and peptides in order to break down their protein content. Cellulases can be found in raw whole foods while proteases and peptides are readily available in whole grains as well as tropical fruits like pineapple and papaya.