“Indian scientists have come up with a cure for flatulence, by blasting guilty foodstuffs such as beans with gamma rays to knock out the offending chemicals that cause the problem, New Scientist magazine said on Wednesday.

“Bacteria in the large intestine are responsible for the gases that cause flatulence, and when these bugs eat certain types of carbohydrate called oligosaccharides they produce a mixture of methane and smelly sulphurous gases, which cause the social embarrassment,” ABC News reports.

The finger of blame is most commonly pointed at beans and vegetables, 60 percent of whose carbohydrates are made up of oligosaccharides.

So Jammala Machaiah and Mrinal Pednekar in the food-science laboratory at India’s Bhabha Atomic Research Center in Trombay decided to see whether small doses of radiation affected these carbohydrates in various beans common in Indian cuisine.

Using standard food treatment technology, they irradiated samples of mung beans, chickpeas, black-eyed beans and red kidney beans with a low-intensity gamma-ray, before giving the beans their standard two day soak prior to cooking.

The scientists, whose research will appear in the journal Food Chemistry, found the irradiation dramatically accelerated a reduction in oligosaccharides which occurs naturally in the soaking process, the magazine said.

Wow. What a gas, huh? [insert rim shot here].

I know, I know. That one really blew. [a second rim shot, followed by an awkward silence; in the distance, we hear the sound of a single fork being dropped onto a hard linoleum floor].

Thank you. I’ll be here all week….

[Related: “Paging David Boone, Mr. David Boone…!”]