I always thought that most of the food comes out again after nutrients are absorbed.
For example, here is a can of noodles. It says the 800gr in the can have a total of something like 600kcal. If the entire can would be converted into fat, this would have to be about 5500 kcal. That would mean that about 90% of it comes out again.
But sometimes I eat and eat and eat and a lot less is coming out then went in.
So, how much food is actually coming out again after being processed in the body?
In: 128
Pretty much everything involved in this process is >50% water trapped in a network of other stuff. The food, you, the waste, all of it. It’s going to contribute a lot to bulk going in and coming out.
Even food that isn’t packed in water/soup is usually pretty wet. Because water can leave you in a variety of ways (sweat, exhalation, urine, feces), it’s hard to measure exactly how much of your food is leaving you in any way at any time. Plus, at any time your body could be retaining very different amounts of water, which will also affect the flows in and out.
The solid parts of food (what isn’t converted to energy or fat) do exit as feces, but even that is pretty wet. If you’re dehydrated or not eating enough fiber (which is great at absorbing and trapping water), your bowel movements will be smaller, especially if you were expecting exactly the same mass of food to come out the other end.
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