Submitted by Water-Cookies t3_1259n8t in explainlikeimfive

So if the steak dinner in your stomach was just about "finished" processing and ready to pass to the next organ, what happens when a beer and a bowl of pretzels enters the mix? Does the stomach suddenly go "dammit man we were just about to move on! Now I've got to start all over again!" and start reprocessing? Or are the new food objects just left undigested and lumped in with the rest of the food clump that is passed on?

24

Comments

You must log in or register to comment.

the_original_Retro t1_je37snx wrote

It's not a "I am completed with this package here you go there next stage knock yourself out" process.

It's a "chemicals are removed and passed on in various orders depending on how filled the digestive process already is" process.

You're not a first-in-first-out organism. Further, you'r e also not a fastest-in-fastest-through organism.

If your innards are not otherwise busy, you process liquid foodstuffs far faster than complex organic foodstuffs like high-fibre proteins. But that processing takes time for the more filling types of food you eat, at least in most cases. Pack your stomach with wagyu-steak fats and proteins, and it'll take a while for everything to sort itself out even if you gorf down an ice cream sundae afterwards.

20

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.

9

phryan t1_je4uk2v wrote

A key role of the stomach is to store food and slowly release it into the small intestine, kind of like a funnel. The stomach also releases some chemicals that breakdown food while it's sitting in the stomach. The intestines are where most of the nutrients are pulled out the food and into your body.

3

Water-Cookies OP t1_je5bbm7 wrote

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.

1

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.

1

Perrenekton t1_je5q46x wrote

I am not sure if this is the cause of the misconception but the stomach is not a giant empty bowl where everything enters, is mixed, and sometimes it opens and let everything flow somewhere else. Food moves through it

1