The ole immortal corn, that “bookmark in your poop,” is a real phenomenon. But how? Can we really not digest corn? Is corn really just a filler in a meal that has no nutritional value? All that and more in this Quickie.
Spotted this post on FB so I thought I’d do a quick search. Turns out the answers are both reassuring, and also a bit gruesome…
As you can read here and here, corn is 90% digestible starches and sugars, and 10% the thin cellulose shell surrounding the precious (to the future of cornkind it is, at any rate) seed germ. Cellulose is remarkably tough and resistant. Resistant to, among other things, some mechanical pressure and also to our stomach acids.
The cellulose is pretty resilient as well, springing back into shape after our chewing has squeezed the nutritious seed germ out, and generally we don’t chew hard enough to damage the shell in doing so. Nine tenths of the corn is highly digestible starches and sugars. So keep corn in your diet and enjoy it. It’s doing you good.
Just maybe don’t look too closely at the bookmark trophies beneath you. Think about it. The shell was mechanically squeezed shut when we chewed, then opened up again in our gut, where it filled up with
— ? ? ? —
as it turns out, our poop.
Generally.
Kinda grisly.
Enjoy, share, donate.
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