What are the constituent elements that make up a bowel movement and why is our body unable to use so much of the food that we put into it?

Question

Seems like a fairly inefficient system tbqh – is it because we’re eating the wrong stuff? or is it because living organisms create a fixed amount of waste no matter what? Poop is weird. I’d like to understand it better.

In: Biology

Answer 1

Food contains a whole lot of different stuff. And your body doesn’t need 100% of the stuff that’s in it.

Also every species needs different things out of their food.

Also, some animals are extremely efficient at extracting nutrients and leave smaller poop relative to their body size. Giraffes leave grape sized poop because they’re remarkably efficient for example.