Summary

In Chapter 15, Bryson takes readers on a tour of their digestive system, which, in all, measures about 40 feet long. For a man, it takes about 55 hours for food to travel from the mouth to the back end. For women, it takes 72. Each meal we eat spends about four to six hours in the stomach and six to eight hours in the small intestine. Although most people believe the stomach is in the belly, it is actually located higher up and it does much less work than we give it credit for. It helps digestion but is not essential to the process, however, the stomach does bathe our food in hydrochloric acid, which kills most microbes. Still, some microbes get in such as E. coli and salmonella. Every year 3,000 people in the United States die of food poisoning. It is no wonder because...