I like corn. It’s one of my favorite vegtables. The other day I had some with dinner. Today, after I performed my daily absolutions, I looked down as I was about to flush. There they were, kernals of corn, cheerfully embedded in my waste. Now, I know I chewed them at the other end, and would have thought the acid in my digestive track could handle the rest, but there it was. So now I’m wondering, do human beings get much nutritional benefit from corn? Or does the bulk of it sail untouched through my guts like a white water rafter on a rapid river? Anyone have any idea?
Corn, being a vegetable, has a different cellular structure than meats. Most vegetables, and other plant material, require lots of digestion to be processed completely. This is the reason that cows have 4 stomachs. Since humans, along with most other mammals, have only 1 stomach, we are unable to properly digest vegetables on the first try.
While we can’t get all the good nutrients from vegetables on the first try, we do get a considerable amount, given the circumstances.
And the fact that we must excrete solid waste indicates that there is material that is consumed that is not used by the body, so it’s not just the corn that isn’t completely used. But I’d rather not recycle my food, so I’ll deal with it.
All plant cells have undigestable cellulose that can’t be broken down by your digestive enzymes. But if you chew the corn thoroughly, you can physically disrupt cellular structures and expose more of the food to your digestive enzymes, allowing more of the food to be utilized.
I should expand on my first post. Plants use glucose in structural molecules like cellulose and in energy storage molecules like starch. Humans can utilize starch but not cellulose. Physically breaking down the cells by chewing can expose the starch to digestive enzymes, but we’re still out of luck with digesting cellulose. Mammals such as cows with ruminant stomachs (and other organisms) have symbiotic microorganisms which can break down cellulose to glucose, making them available to the organism eating the plant.