this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2024
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No Stupid Questions

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[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 92 points 1 week ago (8 children)

Freshness?

That's a giant no. All of the stuff that makes a fart smell like a fart are too volatile to store.

Yeah, the main constituents are stable enough, but methane alone does not a fart make. Besides, not all farts contain methane.

The stuff that smells is what matters for freshness. Hydrogen sulfide (rotten egg), methanethiole (cabbage-like), scatole & indole (poop smell), dimethyl sulfide (garlicky) are the ones that are less than pleasant.

But there's stuff like lemonine and pinene as well. They don't smell unpleasant to most people, but in the wrong proportions, they can contribute to unpleasantness alongside others.

And all that's just the main, common ones. You get traces of stuff like cadaverine sometimes.

The thing most (actually all, but I want to give leeway for the internet) of that have in common isn that they react with other things to some degree or another. They interact with each other in an enclosed space. Hydrogen sulfide is (iirc), the most stable of them, but it isn't exactly going to sit unchanged in a container forever with the other ones.

There's actually a decent amount of research into the digestive processes that involve gasses because they're a big indicator of how things are working in the gut. There's patterns of flatulence contents that vary between people with various digestive issues (like IBS, and IBD in terms of chronic conditions). Active infections change the patterns during infection, and may cause long term changes as well.

An interesting side note is that the chemicals that make farts is that they're also found in rotting bodies, and rotting vegetation, though the proportions and exact chemicals vary between all of those. Digestion is controlled decay, if you want a pithy little phrase to piss off pedants :)

It isn't even an inaccurate phrase; a lot of what happens in decomposition of animals (including humans) is driven by enzymes and bacteria, including the same ones found in our gut. But it'll piss off pedants anyway, because it isn't exactly the same thing.

There's a reason that feces, flatulence, rot, bad breath, and even burning things can share smells in common. There's a reason skunk spray, or musk, or even stale sweat have similarities that our noses can detect. Chemistry, chemical reactions.

They're also partially done by itty bitty critters crawling on and in everything. Those smells in our farts, poop, and rotting flesh are all germ farts. They're the waste products of bacteria (and fungi) eating our waste, the waste of everything. Those microbes are chemical factories.

It's pretty fucking cool.

[–] XeroxCool@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Which is the chemical responsible for the overlap in smells between some of my farts and Wendy's chicken nuggets? Help me Booty-wan, you're my only hope

[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That would likely be more the retained lipids. Does your poo float well? If so, that's likely the cause.

Acrolin (spelling may be wrong, I'm too tired too look it up lol) is the main chemical you smell from over heated oils. There's also several types of aldehydes made as a byproduct of digesting fats, and they'll tend to be more present when the fats didn't get totally broken down.

But that's usually something you smell more in poop than flatus. What you're smelling in the gas is most likely traces akin to the levels of things like cadaverine that aren't a main component produced as a gas the way hydrogen sulfide is.

That's best guess.

If your poo is floating most of the time, and you're smelling that distinct fried food aroma, might want to cut back on your fat intake a little. Or switch more to polyunsaturated fats at least. It's okay if poo floats sometimes, but it should be either neutral buoyant, or sinking most of the time. If there's enough fat that it floats regularly, that's almost always a sign that you're taking in too much, too often. Polyunsaturated fats won't change that, but at least they're a teeny bit less problematic healthwise (as of current best practices I'm aware of).

If it's not floating, or the smell isn't coming along with fatty foods, get your gall bladder checked just to be extra, extra safe. Something like half the people I've known that ended up having theirs removed had issues with their poo looking and smelling funny, often with higher fat levels and unusual smelling gas. Not saying it's some kind of "oh my god" thing, it's just being super cautious.

[–] XeroxCool@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

They typically sink and they don't have that particular scent component. Apparently, I've been living with bad info on buoyancy apparently because a couple decades Oprah said it's supposed to float. As for fat intake, I cycle on and off with keto (high fat, low carb) but can't say these farts occur during keto. I would also note it's some scent very specific to Wendy's nugs that I don't smell anywhere else. Maybe it's just a particular spice? It's not present in the fries so I don't think it's specifically the oil. I appreciate your educated guess. I was hoping literally anyone else would have this experience. My wife concurs about the similarity of smells but the production is solely my talent.

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