An odd question… everyone here has eaten corn, nuts, seeds, etc. and have shit it out whole. Does your body gain any nutritional value (macronutrients and vitamins/minerals, etc.) from the food if it is not wholly digested like this? Is there a medical term for this occurance?
Sort of a crazy question, but I’ve been wondering this for a while.
~Paul
You don’t shi*t it out whole but the skin and such. If you actually chew your food that will not happen so much. Mastication is what you need to do. Chew chew chew it is the thing to do.
haha Hasn’t anyone seen the Road to Wellville? Funniest spoof on Naturopathic Medicine (funny, thats my base proffesion)
Some of the vegetarian stuff they came up with has funny as hell. But watch the fill and look at them using clubbells!
Paul,
It seems like everyone on this site likes to talk shit from time to time, whether figuratively, or in this case literally. The problem you refer to is caused because the human body lacks the ability to breakdown the cellulose found in the cell wall of plants. We lack the enzyme cellulase. If we had this enzyme we could gnaw on a tree branch like many species of the animal kingdom. To answer, the rest of the question, if the particle of food is completely intact, it will pass through your system without contributing either calories or nutrients, and will serve as a source of insoluble bulk forming fiber. As the previous post says, if you chew the food thoroughly, by mechanically breaking up the cell wall, the nutrients on the inside will be exposed, and your body is able to process them, the cell wall will still not be digested, but it will be chewed up and therefore will most likely not be recognized as such in the crapper.
As a funny story, another doc that I know was questioning a patient about the color of his stool to better ascertain if he had any digestive problems, and the guy said “doc,I don’t look at that kind of thing” to which the doc repied, “Well then how do you know when you’re done wiping?” After that he had no problem getting any other info from the patient.
Take care