How fast can food pass through the body?

Question

I have read somewhere that it is normal to defecate about once a day. This leads me to think that it takes about 24h for food to pass through the body under normal circumstances.

Now lets say you eat some bad sushi that triggers “the runs” within an hour.
When you then defecate, is it the actual sushi that comes out or is it just the food you ate before the sushi?

Also, how fast could food theoretically go from mouth to anus?

In: 935

Answer 1

Just careful not to mixup the ideas of time and rate. That’s just to say, just because you poop every 24hr doesn’t mean it takes food 24hr to go from in to out. For example, a factory might take 20 days to make a car, but with an assembly line 20 cars long, it can still pump out 1 car per day. That doesn’t mean all the parts went from the shelf to the car in one day.