Basically, as I understand it, when you eat food it goes through your stomach and then it travels through your bowels where the nutrients and water get gradually absorbed along the way. Coffee, as I understand it, stimulates the muscles in the bowels and causes the contents to move through the intestines more quickly. So if drinking coffee means that food will spend less time in the intestines, does that mean that less nutrients will be absorbed from the food than if no coffee was consumed?
Many plants have anti-nutrients, compounds that inhibit absorption of nutrients. Both coffee and tea inhibit absorption of some minerals, such as iron.
Coffee can reduce how much iron get’s absorbed. This doesn’t have anything to do with the caffeine and the resulting stimulation though, but with something in the coffee binding the receptors or something like that. Don’t know if this happens with other nutrients as well.
All I know is if I drink some coffee and eat a dozen donuts with it I no longer feel hungry. It’s my secret diet.
I don’t have your answer, but I’d like to add to the question.
You specified “nutrients”, but what about the other crap in what we eat?
IF the coffee DOES push everything out before you can absorb every nutrient, is it also preventing us from absorbing all the sugars, calories, preservatives, micro plastics and whatever else we might not want?
Might be a “yes, but” situation that evens out in the end. 🤷🏻♂️ I don’t know, I’m just throwing out ideas.
Our bodies aren’t 100% efficient when it comes to nutrient absorption anyway, so considering there’s a number of other factors at play, it’s probably making minimal difference.
When we eat, the food added to our stomachs signals the large intestine (colon) to get a move on and make room for incoming food. Caffeine can help stimulate this response, but since most nutrient absorption occurs in the small intestine, we’re not really losing anything of value. There is some absorption in the colon, but that’s mostly water being removed so we can have formed stools instead of chronic diarrhea.
Oooh, I didn’t think of that. “Eat all you want without gaining weight with this one simple trick”
(the one simple trick is diarrhea)
Or eating fingers…
Isn’t that just a crappier version of bulimia?
Excessive laxative use is a thing bulimics sometimes do. It will ruin your insides so probably not a good idea.
Totally. And then comes the dependency on laxatives… They’re constipated without them, which causes hemorrhoids.
If it did, the degree to which it happens would be tiny
You don’t poop out the contents of your stomach, small intestines or large intestines, where the absorption is taking place. You poop out what is in your colon, which is quite short in comparison.
Coffee will not make you poop your food before you have adequately processed it.
That depends entirely on how much you ate, and how much coffee you drink. Eat enough and drink enough, and you’ll shit yourself.
Caffeine is a laxative
Also, up to about half of the dry weight of your poop is microbial waste.
I drink entirely too much coffee, and if I don’t be sure to drink plenty of water on top of it I’ll get constipated. It’s almost like the coffee dries me out or something. I had a chemo nurse tell me how important it was to stay hydrated during my treatments and when I told her I drink several cups of coffee a day, she scolded me and said In that case, I need the water even more. I followed her advice and since then I’ve gotten more regular. I used to think it was just normal for me to crap once every three days, but now I go every day and feel better too…
It’s a diuretic. Of course this happens to you.
