09/15/2026
So many of you loved the ice water post about bloating triggers. Round two might be even more controversial: that big dinner salad you eat as a meal, kale, carrots, broccoli, all piled together raw? It might be exactly what’s behind your bloating.
Here’s a clinical rule of thumb I use with patients: if it rots on the counter in a day, it’s easy to digest. Arugula and sprouts turn within a day. A carrot, broccoli, or kale can sit there for a week without changing. That’s dense food, and your gut has to work harder when it’s raw. A small side salad is an easy lift. A giant entrée salad loaded with raw kale, carrots, and broccoli asks your gut to do that work all at once.
Raw vegetables have tough plant cell walls made of cellulose. Only a few gut bacteria are built to break it down, and they’ve largely disappeared from modern guts (Moraïs et al., Science, 2024, DOI 10.1126/science.adj9223). That undigested cellulose moves into your colon, where bacteria ferment it and produce gas, carbon dioxide, hydrogen, methane, the actual mechanism behind bloating. For some people, especially those with IBS-D, that gas can bring on diarrhea too.
Juicing doesn’t get you off the hook either. It’s still raw, still cold, and straining out the fiber strains out exactly what your gut bacteria needed most (Mayo Clinic Health System).
In Chinese medicine, digestion runs on its own internal fire, called Spleen Yang. Cooking does some of that work before food even reaches you. Eating raw means your fire has to do it alone, and when it can’t keep up, food sits instead of moving through, and that’s what shows up as bloating.
Comment RAW and I’ll send you the full list: exactly which vegetables you’re fine eating raw, and which ones to always cook.
