cucumber

Cucumis sativus, the fruit, goes into one recipe here, the two-kiwi smoothie: 100 grams, about a third of a cucumber, skin on, blended with 150 grams of peeled kiwifruit, 100 grams of plain yogurt, 5 grams of fresh ginger, a few mint leaves and 60 ml of cold water. The recipe is built on the FODMAP tables, which put kiwifruit and cucumber on the low side, and it leaves out banana, honey and mango. The cucumber's job is to thin the kiwi without adding sugar.

The Journal's note on bloating is blunt about why it is there. By the USDA's count cucumber is 95 per cent water, and the note reports that a search for cucurbitacins and any human digestive outcome returns nothing: it goes in for the water. The note's own limit is wider. A smoothie can keep the fermentable load low and move a sluggish bowel, but in the Barcelona CT study it opens with, the abdomens of 47 patients with a functional gut disorder had gained about 0.3 litres during an episode, and the bulge came from the diaphragm dropping 12 millimetres. If that is the cause, no glass addresses it.