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Water-Cookies OP t1_je5bbm7 wrote

Reply to comment by the_original_Retro in ELI5: How does your stomach "know" when to pass food on if more food keeps entering during initial digestion? by Water-Cookies

So, when you chug water during your meal, the stomach "knows" to pass that on faster, even though it's now mixing with the chyme and potentially creating a diluted concoction?

It makes sense that liquids are processed faster, it must just have to do with receptors in the stomach recognizing that there is water present and to just let it pass, for lack of a better analogy.

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the_original_Retro t1_je5ex3m wrote

This is where my knowledge fails, but I think it's safe to say that different chemical and filtration processes activate between different classes of in-taken nutrients including water, and these are handled by different organs in the body.

The intestines do much of the work of digestion for more complex molecules, giving those molecules time to be broken down into protein building blocks, and simplifying starches into sugars. But if you drink a couple big glasses of water, most of that water never reaches the full path through them.

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