People spend a lot of time looking forward to their next meal.
Will it be pizza, a burger, a salad or... a bus?
I mean, could you eat a bus?
A strange question, it seems, but let's find out!
The point of eating is to provide your body with energy.
Food enters the mouth where it's broken down into smaller pieces by saliva and chewing.
It then enters the belly where the movement of the muscles around the stomach and gastric juices
break it down further.
From the stomach the mixture of food passes into the small intestine
and large intestine where useful nutrients, and water from your meal are absorbed.
The remaining material is waste and a poop which exits through... your butt hole.
Enzymes are molecules in our body which help speed up the reactions and
chemically break down food.
They are present throughout most of the digestive process but are picky
about what they want to break down. For example, in your saliva,
the enzyme amylase starts breaking down carbohydrates to maltose, a type of sugar.
But, in the small intestine, another enzyme called maltase converts the maltose to glucose
which is then used for energy by the body.
However, some people lack the necessary enzymes to break down specific foods.
Consider the case of Lactose Intolerance where the body is unable to
produce sufficient levels of the enzyme lactase to break down lactose found in foods like milk,
yogurt and cheese. As a result they can have problems with digestion such as:
abdominal bloating, farting or nausea. When it comes to eating a bus,
we don't have enzymes specifically designed to chemically break down
glass, steel or plastic, but that hasn't stopped humans from eating remarkable things.
Mashalla Tito, a French entertainer known as Mr. Eat Everything, consumed,
among other things, a computer, a pair of skis, six chandeliers and an airplane!
This task took two years to finish.
To do it, he disassembled items and cut them into small pieces which
he ate with regular meals.
He added mineral oil to lubricate the passage of the small pieces
and lots of water to wash them all down.
Lotito claimed to eat approximately one kilogram of non-food material daily
while doing these stunts, from which he amazingly suffered no ill effects to his health.
It turns out he had an insatiable desire to eat things like dirt, rubber and metal,
a condition known as "Pica". Pica differs from person to person.
Some people consume non-food items to satisfy an appetite due to exterme mineral deficiency
whereas other cases of pica are related to psychological disorders.
Pica can be quite dangerous as severe complications may arise from eating things our bodies weren't
designed to process.
So, then, how did Mashalla Lotito do it?
It's said that Lotito had an abnormally thick stomach lining which prevented
structural damage as the metal passed through his system.
In this case, he just got lucky that his pica coincided with a well suited biological abnormality.
So, could you eat a bus? Hypothetically, maybe, with a rare thick stomach lining and the bus chopped into
tiny pieces over many years, it might be possible.
But, technically, since you don't produce any enzymes for it, and you
absorbing any nutrients, you aren't actually eating the bus, just simply...
passing it through. And, we don't exactly recommend trying to find out if you can.
Just... don't.
Special thanks to audible for supporting this episode to give you a free
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This week we wanted to recommend the book: "What If?", by Randall Munroe, which does an amazing job
at answering hilarious, and sometimes absurd, hypothetical questions.
It's honestly a fantastic book. You can get a free 30-day trial at audible.com/asap and choose from their massive selection.
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