Foods That Reduce Bloating, and the Ones That Cause It

Start with the usual suspects. Every item on NIDDK's list of the foods and drinks most likely to cause gas contains carbohydrates your stomach and small intestine don't fully digest, so the bacteria in your large intestine finish the job and make gas while they're at it (1):

• Beans, peas and lentils (the musical fruit earned its nickname!)
• Cruciferous vegetables: broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, kale and collards
• Onions, garlic, mushrooms and asparagus, which are rich in hard-to-digest carbs called FODMAPs (4)
• Apples, peaches, pears and fruit juice, which are high in fructose
• Whole wheat, rye and other whole grains
• Milk, ice cream and yogurt, if lactose is a problem for you
• Carbonated drinks, including beer and sparkling water, which add gas directly
• Drinks with high-fructose corn syrup: soda, sports drinks and energy drinks
• Sugar-free gum and candy sweetened with sugar alcohols

Notice how healthy most of that list is. Beans, broccoli and apples belong in a good diet, and for plenty of people they cause no trouble at all. So the goal here isn't to cross those foods off. It's to find your own two or three real triggers, then learn how to prepare the rest.

You don't have to give up broccoli! Cabbage, Brussels sprouts and broccoli contain a carbohydrate called raffinose that your body can't break down until it reaches your colon, where bacteria devour it and release gas (2). Many dietitians suggest cooking those vegetables and keeping portions modest before cutting them out.

1. Steam, roast or stir-fry cruciferous vegetables instead of eating them raw by the bowlful.
2. Rinse canned beans and lentils well. If you cook dried beans, soak them overnight and throw out the water.
3. Build up slowly. NIDDK suggests adding fiber by about 2 to 3 grams a day to help prevent gas and bloating (4).
4. Use the green tops of scallions or chives in place of onion and garlic, which carry most of their FODMAPs in the bulb.

One honest note on fiber: more isn't always better in the short run. Your gut bacteria need a few weeks to adjust to a bigger supply, so pace it, drink water with it, and the gas usually settles down.

This is the step most people skip, and it's the one we'll be most upfront about. Sweeteners with names ending in "-ol", such as sorbitol, mannitol, xylitol, erythritol and maltitol, are sugar alcohols. They're only partly absorbed, so they travel to your large intestine and ferment like any other hard-to-digest carb, and NIDDK lists them right alongside beans and broccoli as a common cause of gas (1).

They hide in sugar-free gum and mints, "no sugar added" candy, protein bars, keto desserts and diet drinks. Sorbitol also occurs naturally in apples, pears, peaches and dried fruit, which is part of why those fruits sit on the trigger list. If sugar-free products show up a lot in your day, run a one-week swap to the regular version in a smaller portion, and see what your stomach says.

If milk leaves you bloated, you may not need to give up dairy, just change how you have it. Lactose intolerance means you have trouble digesting lactose, the sugar in milk, so it reaches your colon undigested and ferments there (2). But most people with lactose intolerance can handle some, and research suggests many could have about 12 grams, the amount in a cup of milk, with few or no symptoms (5). NIDDK's playbook for keeping dairy on the menu:

• Have small amounts of milk at a time, with meals rather than on an empty stomach.
• Try yogurt and hard cheeses like cheddar or Swiss, which are lower in lactose than other milk products and often easier to tolerate.
• Switch to lactose-free milk, which is just as nutritious as regular milk.
• Use a lactase product with dairy when you want the real thing.

Yogurt and kefir show up on both the "causes" and the "helps" lists. Fermentation uses up some of the lactose, and both carry live cultures, but the research on probiotics for bloating is mixed and depends on the strain and the cause. Treat them as foods you're testing, not a fix.

Not all bloating is gas. Processed foods are low in fiber and high in salt, preservatives and fat, and salt causes water retention while fat slows digestion down (3). That puffy, tight feeling after takeout, canned soup or a bag of chips is your body holding on to water, not fermentation. The fix isn't a special tea. It's less sodium and more potassium.

Potassium sits on the other side of the sodium seesaw. A diet rich in potassium helps offset some of sodium's effects, including on blood pressure, and most people can get what they need from food: leafy greens, root vegetables like potatoes, citrus and grapes (6). Bananas, avocados, yogurt and beans (yes, beans again!) round out the list. Our post Don't Get Too Salty shows where sodium hides.

Three kitchen staples have earned their reputation as digestive helpers, with the honest caveat that most of the research is on supplements, not food. Ginger has been used for indigestion and gastrointestinal discomfort since ancient times, though NCCIH notes the firmest evidence is for nausea (7). Grate it into a stir-fry or steep a few slices in hot water.

Peppermint is the best studied of the three. The research is on enteric-coated peppermint oil capsules for IBS, where NCCIH says a small amount of evidence suggests they may help (8). Peppermint tea is the everyday version. Fennel seeds are the traditional after-meal chew across the Mediterranean and South Asia, worth a try even though the research in people is thin.

If constipation is behind your bloating, the fix is food that keeps things moving: fiber and water, ideally in the same bite. Green kiwifruit is the standout. In a 2023 randomized crossover trial of 184 adults, two green kiwis a day for four weeks increased complete bowel movements by about 1.5 per week in people with constipation and improved their gut comfort scores (9). Few whole foods have a trial like that behind them.

• Berries, citrus, kiwi and firm bananas: lower-FODMAP fruit that many people tolerate better than apples, pears and mango (4)
• Cucumber, celery, zucchini, carrots, spinach and bell peppers: mostly water and gentle on the gut
• Oats, rice and quinoa in place of wheat and rye, if bread and pasta leave you puffy
• Plain, still water in place of soda, the simplest swap on this list

A quick word on that wheat swap. NIDDK notes that some people with IBS get more symptoms after eating gluten-containing foods even without celiac disease (4), and wheat also carries FODMAPs, so feeling better off bread doesn't automatically make gluten the villain. Our post Why Is Everyone Gluten-Free Now? digs into that.

If the single-food swaps above don't move the needle, the structured version is the low FODMAP diet. It's an elimination test, not a lifestyle. You cut high-FODMAP foods for a few weeks, and if your symptoms improve, you slowly add them back, one group at a time, to find the ones that actually matter (4).

Do it with a registered dietitian. The diet cuts a long list of healthy foods, it's easy to get wrong, and the whole point is the reintroduction phase. Dietitians also caution against staying strictly low FODMAP for months, since those carbs feed helpful gut bacteria. Harvard Health puts the trial after the simpler changes, and so do we (2).