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EkbyBjarnum t1_je4mzfd wrote

Oh! I actually JUST finished reading this book about the digestive system with my daughter, so this is fresh in mind. (Great book series I think this sub would dig, by the way)

Your stomach dissolves your food into a liquid concoction called chyme, and it passes from there through a sphincter into your small intestine. Solid food, food that isn't done with that part of the digestion process, straight up isn't going to fit through that sphincter.

It doesn't become solid waste again until the large intestine.

Your whole digestion tract is just sphincters all the way down.

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Water-Cookies OP t1_je5azn6 wrote

Fit a square peg into a round hole. Interesting, I wonder if the stomach just only allows the chyme to pass, and everything else just keeps mixing until it's broken into chyme

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Birdie121 t1_je66xd6 wrote

Not always. Insoluble fiber won’t break down, and it’s common for whole seeds and fruit skins and other tougher materials to remain whole all the way to your poop.

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Prunus-cerasus t1_je5loom wrote

Nope. Some hard to digest foods can pass all the way through intact. Of course they have to be of a size that can fit in your intestines. Some berries come to mind as an example.

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pigeonr0ck t1_je6vfcg wrote

Humans are just a tube surrounded by meat with sphincters to keep things in place.

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