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Tags: energy, fibre, fibrous food, food, gut, healthy diet, non-fibrous food, perilstasis, roughage
Filed under Digestion | Posted Jun 16, 2009 |
Here are some things that you can do to see how peristalsis works.
- Put a little oil or grease on a small marble. The oil or grease represents the slippery fluid called mucus which is produced by the walls of the gut. Mucus helps to lubricate the movement of food through the gut.
- Put the marble into one end of a short piece of rubber tubing.
- Hold the tube upright with the marble at the bottom.
- Pinch the tube below the marble so that it slides up inside the tube.
The food which we swallow is never usually as hard as a marble. However, it does need to be bulky so that the circular muscles in the gut wall have something to push against. It is for this reason that a healthy diet should contain enough fibrous food, often called fibre or roughage. The following foods contain a lot of roughage: wheat bran, whole (unrefined) cereals, peas, beans, raisins and spinach. If a diet contains very little fibre, food may take as long as a week (instead of about one to three days) to pass from the mouth to the anus.
Some scientists say that the diets of people in many developed countries, such as Britain and the USA, contain far too little fibre. It is possible that this lack of fibre in the diet is one reason for widespread ill-health. Fibrous foods generally contain less energy and more bulk than an equal amount of non-fibrous food. This makes people feel fuller and they do not have to eat so much before feeling satisfied. Enough fibre in the diet may help people to avoid becoming obese (overweight).