Basically, as I understand it, when you eat food it goes through your stomach and then it travels through your bowels where the nutrients and water get gradually absorbed along the way. Coffee, as I understand it, stimulates the muscles in the bowels and causes the contents to move through the intestines more quickly. So if drinking coffee means that food will spend less time in the intestines, does that mean that less nutrients will be absorbed from the food than if no coffee was consumed?

  • Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world
    81·
    1 month ago

    I don’t have your answer, but I’d like to add to the question.

    You specified “nutrients”, but what about the other crap in what we eat?

    IF the coffee DOES push everything out before you can absorb every nutrient, is it also preventing us from absorbing all the sugars, calories, preservatives, micro plastics and whatever else we might not want?

    Might be a “yes, but” situation that evens out in the end. 🤷🏻‍♂️ I don’t know, I’m just throwing out ideas.

    • Duranie@leminal.space
      3·
      1 month ago

      Our bodies aren’t 100% efficient when it comes to nutrient absorption anyway, so considering there’s a number of other factors at play, it’s probably making minimal difference.

      When we eat, the food added to our stomachs signals the large intestine (colon) to get a move on and make room for incoming food. Caffeine can help stimulate this response, but since most nutrient absorption occurs in the small intestine, we’re not really losing anything of value. There is some absorption in the colon, but that’s mostly water being removed so we can have formed stools instead of chronic diarrhea.

    • AccountMaker@slrpnk.netOP
      71·
      1 month ago

      Oooh, I didn’t think of that. “Eat all you want without gaining weight with this one simple trick”