Title says all. Plant cells are covered by cell wall made of cellulose. The human body doesn’t have the enzyme cellulase to digest it, so why do we eat them? Do they just pass through us? If so, why are they ‘healthy’?
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Firstly we can break the cell walls by mechanical action, chewing. And then in the stomach the cell walls gets broken down by acid. The acid itself does not break down the cellulose and pectin and other molecules in the cell wall but changes them and breaks the connections between them. Essentially we are not destroying the bricks but picking away at the mortar between the bricks so we get through the wall. And we do not have to dissolve the entire cell wall to get to the content of the cell, we only need to get one hole in the cell wall to get the content out. And when the remains get into the later stages of digestion there are lots of bacteria and some of them might produce their own version of cellulase that can help digest cellulose for us. However most of the cellulose we eat still end up in the toilet, but with the content of the cell removed from it.
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