Gas, acidity and pain after meals, and the one sugar behind them

When Divya* joined, she was 32 and eating a fairly clean diet: fruit and vegetables every day, little fried or packaged food, no tea or coffee. Her gut survey still showed a clear pattern. She rated passing gas 4 out of 5 and acidity or burning in the stomach 4 out of 5. Food seemed to take too long to digest (3 out of 5), she noticed undigested food in her stool (3 out of 5) and she had brain fog (3 out of 5).

Her main worry was a sharp pain just under the ribs after eating certain foods, and she wanted to stop it coming back. She had taken antacids and painkillers in the previous six months and was not taking any supplements. She told us she reacted to chickpeas and to 23 other foods.

Raffinose is a sugar made of three units (galactose, glucose and fructose). It sits in chickpeas and other pulses, and in cabbage-family vegetables such as broccoli and Brussels sprouts, asparagus and some whole grains. Humans do not make the enzyme that cuts it (alpha-galactosidase), so it travels intact to the colon, where gut bacteria ferment it and release gas. Most people notice a little. Some people react strongly.

The effect is measurable. In a small crossover study of 12 healthy adults, adding 5 g of raffinose a day, or 200 g of canned chickpeas, raised reported flatulence and mild bloating compared with a control diet. Supplements of alpha-galactosidase, the enzyme that breaks raffinose down, are sold to cut this gas, which points to raffinose as the trigger. “Raffinose sensitivity” is a working description of this pattern, not a formal diagnosis.

A reaction to chickpeas on its own looks like a single food problem. A reaction to chickpeas and 23 other foods looks like a food list, until you ask what the foods share. Our founder, Dr Nikita Dinger, spotted that the foods Divya reacted to were rich in raffinose-family sugars, and that her symptoms (gas, acidity, pain after eating, slow digestion) were the ones raffinose produces.

That gave a precise question to test. Instead of removing a long list of foods and adding supplements, we removed one cause.

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Over three months on the raffinose-free diet, Divya’s gut symptoms improved drastically, and she reports the reactions she had to chickpeas and other foods settling. Because she took no probiotics, prebiotics or supplements, the change can be tied to the diet itself rather than to a product.

This is a single participant’s observation, not a controlled trial. Whether foods can be reintroduced, and how, depends on the individual and is decided case by case under guidance.

Sources: Gastrointestinal tolerance to daily canned chickpea intake (Can J Diet Pract Res); Alpha-galactosidase evidence summary.