How Long Does Food Stay In Your Body?

Author's Bio: Marcie Vaske, MS, LN, CNS

Hi, and welcome back to our channel.

Today we're going to talk about how long does food stay in your body.

We'll cover the factors that support digestion and follow up with what is the process of digestion, as well as what foods may increase or slow our digestion, and how much does hydration have an effect, as well as exercise, and how much of a role does our gut microbiome play.

But before we begin, my name is Marcie Vaske. I'm a functional licensed nutritionist with Oswald Digestive Clinic, and at Oswald Digestive Clinic, we work with people who struggle with gut issues. I'll also link our free guide, which is Five Ways to Improve Your Gut Health.

[Video Transcript Below Video - it is the same information]

So now back to our topic. I don't know if you've ever thought about how long food stays in your body, but it is kind of interesting to know the details.

How Long Does Food Stay in Your Body?

So to begin with, we're just going to walk through the different steps in digestion and just give you a breakdown of what it all takes to digest the foods you intake.

Mouth (A Few Seconds to 1 Minute)

So first, we put the food in our mouth, and the food in our mouth is where the chewing starts, obviously, and the breakdown begins, and it's only in your mouth for maybe seconds to up to a minute.

Esophagus (10 to 30 Seconds)

So next it enters our esophagus, and there it is, spends about 10 to 30 seconds making its way down to our stomach. And the way that it does this is the food that we've consumed, mixes with our saliva in our mouth, makes it to our esophagus, and it travels down with a muscular contraction, which we call peristalsis.

Stomach (2 to 6 Hours)

Now here the food enters the stomach and it can stay in your stomach for two and up to six hours, but it does depend on the kind of foods that you've eaten. High fat meals, for example, will tend to stay a bit longer, up to four to six hours. And high carb or simple types of carbohydrates will be much more quick to enter our stomach and then exit. That's usually in there for around two to three hours. Our food mixes in our stomach with the bile from our gallbladder, our digestive enzymes, and is broken down by our hydrochloric acid.

Small Intestine (4 to 8 Hours)

So once our food gets broken down properly, it then enters our small intestine where it will be for about four to eight hours. So our food in our small intestine is broken down further and absorbed into us getting out our minerals and our nutrients from our food that we consumed.

Large Intestine (12 to 48 Hours)

After the work of the small intestine, our food then enters our large intestine. The food then is there for about 12 to 48 hours, and here is where water is absorbed and our bacteria or our flora in our intestinal tract start to break down the food even further. Whatever is remaining will end up as waste after it enters our large intestine.

Rectum & Anus (12 to 72 Hours)

It will then end up in our rectum and anus here, it stays for about 12 to 72 hours. That's just waste and waiting for a bowel movement to occur.

So all in all, our digestive process or our food can stay in our body from 24 all the way up to 72 hours. And of course, there's different factors involved, and depending on the health of the individual as well as diet that you're consuming and the hydration that you're also having will make this time either shorter or longer, but typically it's within that 24 to 72 hour timeframe.

So now we understand how the digestive process works and how long it's in each part of our digestive system.

What Are Some Factors That Come Into Play?

And one of 'em is your diet, obviously. So depending on what you consume, it will be faster or take longer. And one big component is the fiber. So foods that are high in fiber typically make it through the digestive system more quickly. While high fat foods or even low fiber diet foods will take more time while fiber make our digestive process more quick.

We have two different fibers that play a role. One is soluble fiber and one is insoluble fiber. Soluble fiber is the fiber that kind of makes this gel-like substance in our digestive system, which will take longer to break down. And that stays in your gut about 24 to 48 hours where in comparison to insoluble fibers.

So the fibers that we'll get from vegetables or nuts or even whole grains will pass through more quickly.

Now, another big component of digestion is going to be hydration. And we're always talking about make sure you drink water, make sure you drink enough water throughout your day. But hydration helps to break down the food in your stomach as well as absorb the nutrients in your small intestine. Water also helps to keep the stool more soft so we have more consistent bowel movements. In addition to helping nutrient absorption, water also helps to keep the mucosal lining of our digestive system intact, helping it stay healthier, which protects our stomach from irritants.

So when it comes to digestion and hydration or water, what is important to understand is you don't want to drink a whole bunch of water with your meal. It's better to drink water before the meal at least 30 minutes prior, and then while you're eating your meal, sip on water as you need, and then of course, following up 30 minutes later with some more water so that way your body digests better and you also stay very hydrated.

So another important factor to digestion is physical activity and moving around, walking, doing workouts. This helps to have a regular bowel movements, helps to keep that intestinal tract moving. What I talked about earlier was peristalsis. So the exercise helps to stimulate that, which in turn keeps the consistency of our bowel movements on a daily basis.

And finally,

How Does Our Gut Microbiome Help Our Digestive Process?

And absolutely it makes a difference on the diversity of flora that you have in your microbiome supporting proper nutrition absorption, stimulating our bowel movements and our gut flora helps to protect against opportunistic bacteria as well as reduce any kind of inflammation. So all of these factors from the kind of fibers or diet that you consume to drinking water, to getting movement, and the health of your gut microbiome will make a difference in how long food stays in your body.

Now again, I'm going to link our website here where you can easily make an initial appointment if you are struggling with your gut health. As always, comment down below if you have questions. We love to hear from you and thanks again for watching.

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If you'd like to explore any of this information further or obtain an individualized nutrition plan, you can schedule an initial appointment at our clinic. We also take insurance and some of our clients get full coverage, which is great.