Swallowed air and fizzy drinks

Two routes, two problems

Everything in your gut that is gas got there one of two ways. Either you swallowed it, or bacteria made it by fermenting carbohydrates your small intestine could not absorb. The two behave completely differently and the confusion between them is why so much advice about bloating does not work.

Swallowed air is nitrogen and oxygen. It has no smell, it arrives in bulk, and most of it leaves upwards as a belch long before it reaches anywhere interesting. Fermented gas is hydrogen, carbon dioxide, sometimes methane, plus the trace sulphur compounds that cause all the reputational damage — and it has no shortcut back.

So if your complaint is volume and pressure, swallowed air is worth attacking, because the fix is behavioural and fast. If your complaint is smell, swallowed air is irrelevant and you want why farts smell instead.

Where the air comes from

• Eating fast. The single biggest contributor for most people. Each swallow carries air; more swallows in less time means more air.
• Talking while you eat. Lunch meetings are a mechanism, not a coincidence.
• Fizzy drinks. Dissolved carbon dioxide comes out of solution in the warmth of your stomach, and the drinking style they encourage adds air on top.
• Straws and drinking from the bottle. Both pull air along with the liquid.
• Chewing gum. Constant swallowing with nothing to swallow.
• Ill-fitting dentures, smoking and anxiety. All increase swallowing frequency, and the last one explains why stressful weeks and bloated weeks tend to be the same weeks.

Why gum is the worst offender

Chewing gum earns a special mention because it hits you with both mechanisms at once. The chewing itself drives repeated swallowing, which brings air down. And sugar-free gum is sweetened with polyols — sorbitol, xylitol, maltitol — which the small intestine absorbs poorly by design, since that is exactly why they contribute few calories.

What is not absorbed arrives in the colon, where bacteria treat it as food. So you get the odourless volume from the air and the fermented gas from the sweetener, from a product most people do not think of as food at all. The same applies to sugar-free mints and diet sweets; the full list of mechanisms is in foods that cause gas.

What actually helps

The useful thing about this half of the problem is that the interventions are dull and they work: slow down, keep your mouth shut while chewing, use a glass instead of a straw, and treat fizzy drinks and gum as occasional rather than constant. None of it requires eliminating a food group.

What it will not do is change the smell, and it will not change your count as much as you expect — the range is wide and mostly set by fermentation. If the number is what worries you, how many a day is normal has the measured figures rather than the guessed ones. And if you are currently dealing with the problem by not dealing with it, holding it in covers what that does and does not do.

Frequently asked questions

This is general information, not medical advice. FartRank is a game. If your symptoms are painful, sudden, persistent, or come with weight loss, bleeding or a change in bowel habits, talk to a doctor — not to a leaderboard.

Sources

• NHS — Flatulence
• NHS — Bloating
• Cleveland Clinic — Gas and gas pains
• Tomlin J, Lowis C, Read NW. Investigation of normal flatus production in healthy volunteers. Gut, 1991.

Published 19 October 2026 · by Furiosa Studio