JOHANNESBURG – It’s a “factual reality” that beans make you break wind, says South Africa’s advertising watchdog.

A TV advert for sweet onions showed a rugby player eating beans that made him smell “stinky.” The advert claims that “with sweet onions there are no tears, no burn and definitely no stink.”

The country’s Dry Bean Producers Organization complained about the advert on the basis that the “stinky” charge was untrue but the Advertising Standards Authority threw out the charge and said it was widely known that beans produce gas.

“It plays on an objectively determinable factual reality which cannot be denied…” the ASA said on its Web site.