How Fast

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That's fast and super hilarious that you figured that out. I've heard lettuce travels faster than other foods

I know Sauer Kraut travels reeeaal fast sometimes.

Dan

You might want to check your math, huskyjerk.

If your system is 29 feet long and food it traveling at 120 miles per hour, it would take FAR less than an hour to reappear.

It's actually .00549 mph and .00806 feet per second.

but that's still pretty fast, considering these are your INTESTINES it's going through.

Yeah I was way off!!:lol: Math was never my strong suite. 81 MPH would cover 30 ft in less than a second:ybatty:

wellllll, is it 29' (ft) for the total GI tract, or just the small bowel (ileum, duodenum, secum, whatever else is in there)... doesnt' the large bowel add another 6 feet or so? I dunno... maybe I should try swallowing a tape measure... one of those soft fabric ones, not a metal retractable one (ouch!!).. But, if you think that's fast, just think how fast you're moving when you're standing still. As the earth rotates, we travel the entire circumferance of the earth in 24 hours... So, depending on where on the earth you're standing still, you ARE moving upwards of 1000 miles an hour. and if you factor in the spiral motion in space our solar system, we are really racking up some speeding tickets with the Galaxy cops... Anyway, back to the 'bowels', I dunno what the exact length of the GI tract is (or should be).. but I did watch on a PBS show that IF one took the small bowel, opened it up, stretched out all of the wrinkles, furrows and folds, the typical small bowel would stretch to cover three tennis courts... so, it's sort of asking how big is an accordion? Open or closed?

Kev lol

I don't know how large a human intestine is with all of the pieces together, I think it is in the 30 something range. But I have dissected fetal pigs and the intestines of those just are insanely large. I could easily cover a few pieces of paper with them. That animal is about from your wrist to your elbow so that is pretty small for such huge intestines.

There are varying lengths depending on your source of information, but the small intestine is approximately 20-25 feet and the large intestine is approximately 4-5 feet. One rule of thumb for calculating the length of the small intestine is to multiple your body length by 3.5. So....... if you are 6 feet tall your small intestine is approximately 21 feet long.

Slow Colon

I have the exact opposite problem - food traveling through my colon takes a couple of days.

I did that with a mandarin orange once.
In one end and out the other in less than an hour.
Creepy! That'll teach me to chew my food.
It DOES feel like 80 MPH sometimes.... evn though your math was off. Still funny.

An hour? HA! Give me 20 minutes...