re: Health Etiquette: how to tell someone their diet sucks

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If you flush your system too quickly, completely and too often, your stomach and intestines do not get the time to absorb the nutrients in your food.
It just washes on through

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I searched and searched and have been unable to find any shred of evidence for this claim. As long as you're not having the hershey squirts every time you visit the bathroom, you're absorbing nutrients.

I did find this, however:

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Keep in mind that while your stomach is certainly a hotbed of digestive activity, virtually nothing (except alcohol) is absorbed there. Your small intestine, the next stop, is the site of virtually all nutrient absorption, including proteins, carbohydrates, fats and water, as well as vitamins and minerals.

There are two primary ways that nutrients cross through the walls of the small intestine and enter the bloodstream: passive diffusion and active transport absorption. “Think of passive diffusion as pouring liquid through a cheesecloth,” says Volpe. It’s a simple process where nutrients move from an area of high concentration (from inside the intestine) to an area of low concentration (the bloodstream). Active transport absorption means that the nutrient requires a helper or carrier molecule to get it through the intestinal wall out into general circulation.

Although some nutrients are more prone to one type of absorption than the other, all vitamins – including fat-soluble ones (like A, D, E, and K), and water-soluble ones (like B and C) – are absorbed through passive diffusion, according to Bill Wheeler, BS, MS, PhD, ACSM, a nutritional consultant for professional and Olympic athletes. Minerals like calcium and magnesium, on the other hand, are transported actively. Yet many nutrients can be absorbed more readily than others, depending on what kind of food they’re coming from, and also on the body’s current nutritional status and relative need for that nutrient.

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