• Question: How does our food turn into poo?

    Asked by emmagrace to Dalya, Derek, Sarah, Tim, Tom on 18 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Dalya Soond

      Dalya Soond answered on 17 Jun 2011:

      Poo looks like poo, I think, because of it’s shape, smell and colour.

      It forms log-like shapes when food gets compacted down by the muscle contractions in the intestines, which are also used to push the food along the digestive track.

      It turns brown because there are pigments (colour chemicals) in bile, which is material produced by the gall bladder that breaks down fats in your food.

      It smells because the bacteria in your stomach break down food containing cellulose (vegetables and fruits) and one of the by-products of this is a smelly gas.

    • Photo: Tim Millar

      Tim Millar answered on 17 Jun 2011:

      We chew it and add enzymes and digest it with acid. Then all the good bits are taken out and the fibre, some water and cells of the gut including bacteria are formed into the poo. if we don’t drink enough water, its dry and hard and not easy to “get rid of”. If we have stomach bug, we don’t take enough water out of it and it gets a bit “sloppy”. Hopefully, its usually somewhere inbetween!

    • Photo: Derek McKay-Bukowski

      Derek McKay-Bukowski answered on 17 Jun 2011:

      ( These sorts of questions are yet another good reason for studying physics instead of biology! )

      *shudder*

    • Photo: Tom Crick

      Tom Crick answered on 18 Jun 2011:

      Because we have extracted all of the nutrients and water from our food, so we have to excrete the waste products somehow…this is poo or faeces.

      (the word faeces is the plural of the Latin word fæx meaning “dregs”!)

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