The Metabolic Dance: How Digestion Transforms Food and Enables Life

By Teresa L. Johnson and Norman G. Hord

If you’ve ever wondered what happens when you eat, then it’s time to take a journey from the table to the toilet.

This detailed and humorous exploration of what your body does to food—and what food does to your body—will leave you with a greater appreciation of the act of eating. You’ll never look at food the same way after The Metabolic Dance.


“Johnson and Hord have created a highly readable resource for nutrition students, applied researchers, and interested laypersons alike. This engaging and entertaining book illuminates a number of important issues not commonly treated in a didactic manner and certainly not covered in most nutrition textbooks. It’s a beautiful narrative in the style of the best of Lewis Thomas [Lives of a Cell] infused with The Fantastic Voyage.”

— Jed Fahey, ScD, Nutritional Biochemist,
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Jul 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9781483430645

Book preview

The Metabolic

Dance

How Digestion Transforms Food and Enables Life

Teresa L. Johnson

and Norman G. Hord

Copyright © 2015 Teresa L. Johnson and Norman G. Hord.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-3065-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-3064-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015906780

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 06/16/2015

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1 Communication

Chapter 2 Love Thy Gut

Chapter 3 Love Thy Inner Neighbors

Chapter 4 The Players: Northern Passage

Chapter 5 The Players: Southern Passage

Epilogue

Appendix

Bibliography

Further Reading

Preface

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One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

~ Virginia Woolf, in A Room of One’s Own¹

We came together to write this story about digestion after many years of pondering the relationship between food and health. We found ourselves asking convoluted questions: What’s good for us? When is what’s good for us bad for us? When is what’s bad for us actually good for us? And when is too much of it bad for us? How would a person know? Perhaps a better question was: What part of the body is tasked with unraveling these mysteries? The answer became obvious: The gut, of course.

When we say the gut we say more than we know—which is why we wrote this book. The gut, a wonder of communication among organs, performs a million operations daily to digest, process, absorb, distribute, and excrete the many foodstuffs you consume. Yes, there is much to be discussed (and discovered) about what happens between eating a delicious meal and producing its not-so-great smelling waste products, a subject that can be addressed simply (and starkly): What happens between eating this…

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and the production of these?

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Lots of fascinating stuff—a metabolic dance of sorts that turns gastronomic delights into life-sustaining chemicals. This amazing story fascinated us and we wanted to share it with you.

On a fundamental level, we are foodies: fascinated by food and its myriad wonders. So, our perspective is a little like a classic Italian lasagna: multi-layered, with all of the flavors—bitter, salty, sweet, sour, and umami—disclosed (and tasted) as we discuss the processes of digestion from north to south and the communication that these processes enable. Indeed, you’ll never think of dinner conversation in quite the same light.

But on a professional level, we are registered dietitians, public health professionals, and teachers, actively engaged in helping people improve and maintain their health through eating good food and pursuing healthy lifestyles. We hope that you enjoy this friendly, useful little book and that you take away this basic message: Food—what our bodies do to it and what it does to our bodies—forms a microcosm of life. These processes constitute a reflection of our lives and a metaphor for our choices and their results.

Teresa L. Johnson, MSPH, RD

Norman G. Hord, PhD, MPH, RD

Chapter 1

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Communication

Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep