question about digestion

fitinyoga14 · January 2010

i've wondered about this for a while now. does eating a healthy food along with an unhealthy food block more of the unhealthy food from getting absorbed and used?

For example: You're hungry for an afternoon snack while you're out and about, and your food choices are limited. Say the only food around you at the moment is "Reese's" snack bar (mostly chocolate, wafers, fake peanut butter, and other unhealthy stuff). So you eat that because you're body is telling you that you need to eat.
However, you unexpectedly come across a more nutritious snack, such as an apple, and eat that too.

Is your body more likely to absob whatever nutrients and bad stuff in the Reese's bar if you were to eat only that for a snack?
OR, if you ate the apple and Reese's bar, is your body more likely to absorb the better nutrients from the apple and discard more of the Reese's bar?

Mylo301 · January 2010

I'm no nutritionist...but this sounds like wishful thinking to me. Our bodies our designed to digest what we eat, period. I've heard there are ways to help improve absorption...taking vitamins with orange juice comes to mind to help improve how your body take in the vitamins...but I don't know if that's true. Those diet drug commercials try to get us to believe that if you take a pill and eat a whole pizza, you won't digest the bad stuff....but, personally, I don't believe that and I know that a pizza isn't the good nutrition our bodies need. An occasional slice or two, sure...but if you eat a whole pizza, you're giving your body a good shot of bad stuff and you're gaining weight. Period.

I'd make an effort to avoid the dilema by remembering to carry the nutritious snacks w/ you. If you only eat the apple and maybe a little peanut butter, you know without a doubt that your body is digesting the nutritious stuff and not the bad stuff. Easier said than done, I know...but if we don't try, it won't ever happen, right?

~Mylo

PattyTheUndefeated · January 2010

Are you serious? Your body will use the most simple form of sugar that is readily available and will go straight for that chocolate bar. Eating an apple won't cancel out something bad you ate. Your body uses whatever you dump into it, and stores the rest. It doesn't pick and choose. YOU do.

meglide · January 2010

I think it's a serious question and the serious answer is that there are some effects to eating healthy foods especially those rich in fiber to what your body absorbs of the unhealthy foods you eat. For example, it's long been known that higher fiber in your diet reduces the fat absorption in your digestive tract. Links below are just a sample of some of the scientific research on the topic.

http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content/abstract/119/10/1383

http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content/abstract/130/2/272S

http://www.journalarchive.jst.go.jp/english/jnlabstract_en.php?cdjournal=tjem1920&cdvol=176&noissue=4&startpage=227

additionally it seems that ingestion of polysterols can reduce the absorption of cholesterol through the digestive tract

http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S027153170600176X

http://www.springerlink.com/content/k2k6n8l3275t4403/

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/35/4/697

believe the key, though, is to eat the healthy food first and for it to still be in the digestive tract when the unhealthy food is introduced.

Mike

p.s. None of this should be taken as license to eat unhealthy foods, but most foods are a mixture of good and bad. By increasing the good, decreasing the bad and restricting daily calories to only what you burn in a day (on average) or less if you're trying to lose weight, you stand the best chance at optimizing your overall health and fitness.

question about digestion

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