Man Blames Ham Roll For 'Life-Changing' Flatulence In Bizarre Lawsuit

While it's embarrassing to pass gas, especially in public, rest assured that it is a totally normal part of the digestive process that can happen up to 20 times per day (via Harvard Health Publishing). There's no way to avoid flatulence because when you eat, you swallow air, and that air collects in your digestive tract. In addition to the air, when you're digesting food, gasses like hydrogen, methane, and carbon dioxide are the byproduct of that process, which can also cause a "silent, but deadly" situation (via Healthline).

Even though passing gas is inevitable, some foods result in more gas than others. The little jingle about beans is actually scientifically accurate because the legumes contain oligosaccharide, which is not fully broken down in the small intestine (via VeryWell Health). The real reason beans can cause gas is that the large intestine has to then pick up the slack and break down the sugar with bacteria, and gas is created in the process. Cabbage, broccoli, and pears are a few other foods that can lead to you breaking wind more than normal. Ham rolls are not mentioned specifically on any of these lists, so we imagine that one U.K. man is especially frustrated by the amount of flatulence he is allegedly experiencing (via LAD Bible).

Enjoying a snack at a Christmas market in 2017 allegedly turned into five years of tummy troubles for one U.K. man (via LAD Bible). In an ideal world, we would all avoid food poisoning, but when you start to feel it come on, you usually think to yourself that it should pass in a day or so. This U.K. man, however, is claiming he ended up bedridden for five weeks and experienced "excessive flatulence" for the next five years. The man is now suing the vendor from the Christmas market for approximately $240,000 (£200,000), claiming that the flatulence is not only embarrassing but disrupting his life. According to his lawyer, the man's stomach is still disturbed from the ham roll, causing him to lose sleep from the "churning noises." His initial symptoms were "cramps, fever, vomiting, and diarrhea," so it makes sense that he suspects he had salmonella poisoning (via CDC).

The company might be trying to get off on a technicality because while no salmonella was found at the stall, E. coli bacteria was found on a knife. According to Mount Sinai, gas is a symptom of E. coli, though we couldn't make such a diagnosis. Moreover, it's worth noting that E. coli symptoms typically subside after a number of days. There may be issues with causation in the case, but the man still plans to take it to trial.