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
It *usually* takes between 24 and 72 hours for food to go through your body. When you eat something bad and your body decides ‘everything must go’ it can be a whole lot quicker.
But it will still be “first in, first out” so the food you ate before the sushi will be expelled first, and then the sushi.
For the fastest time I can find references for 10 hours but no hard sources so take that with a grain of salt.
Edit:
After reading some of the comments below I have a small LPT. People; PLEASE eat more fiber. Food is not supposed to just fall through you :’)
If you eat bad sushi or some other bad food, the body’s first line of defense is to empty the stomach before any food can leave. The body does this by vomiting. This will remove most of not all of the bad toxins.
If something happens to leave the stomach, your body opens up the floodgates to empty the intestines as quickly as possible. Typically it can take a few hours (4-6) for symptoms of diarrhea to begin, but that can vary depending on what your body is trying to deal with, but if your body wants rid of something, it will do everything it can to get rid of the bad stuff.
Regardless of the actual answer, your assumption of one poop/day = one day to pass through, is not always true. It could just be that you are defecating out the food from 3 days ago, and replacing it with the food today.
As for how long it really takes, it varies, but [2-5 days is commonly cited.](https://www.mayoclinic.org/digestive-system/expert-answers/faq-20058340#:~:text=It%20takes%20about%2036%20hours,days%2C%20depending%20on%20the%20individual.)
With the right means of delivery, most food can pass through the average human body in a few milliseconds.
If I eat blueberries for breakfast, typically they are coming out of me 3-5 hours later. But…I think I’m different from most, I typically have 2-3 bowl movements a day (not diarrhea, just normal bm’s)
This isn’t directly in answer to your question, but it’s important to note that the frequency of bowel movements and the time it takes food to travel through your digestive system are not the same.
For example, it can take food two days to pass through your digestive system, but you still have a bowl movement every day. But how? Because you eat food every day.
|Ate on|Poop on|
|:-|:-|
|Sunday|Tuesday|
|Monday|Wednesday|
|Tuesday|Thursday|
|Wednesday|Friday|
|Thursday|Saturday|
|Friday|Sunday|
|Saturday|Monday|
I have IBS-D and I can honestly say I’ve both drank red kool-aid and had red diarrhea 15 minutes later and ate a burrito with corn and had the corn exit my body 20 minutes later. That’s why I currently only eat one small meal a day, which always immediately leads to a trip to the bathroom
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Depends on whether you ate something that disagrees with you. If your body thinks you’ve ingested poison, you’re going to flush everything out as soon as possible. It takes about 6 hours for food to hit your large intestine, but then if your guts want it out, they can just speed it along in liquid form. You absorb essentially no nutrients from it if that happens. So minimum about 5 hours.
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.
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