HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?

This week: To digest a meal

THE amount of time it takes food to pass through the digestive system and break down varies dramatically.

‘A balanced meal takes two hours to move from the stomach into the small bowel,’ explains Dr Anthony Hobson, a gut motility specialist at the Functional Gut Clinic in London.

Once there, the food is broken down by bile and enzymes for two to five hours, then smaller particles are absorbed into the bloodstream.

Harder elements to digest such as fibre then move into the first part of the colon where gut bacteria work on it for another four to 12 hours.

Once everything useful has been extracted, a stool takes four to eight hours to move to the colon, where it remains until you go to the loo. Diet, metabolism and medication affect this.