Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary CanalW. W. Norton & Company, 2014 - 352 pages The irresistible, ever-curious, and always best-selling Mary Roach returns with a new adventure to the invisible realm we carry around inside. “America’s funniest science writer” (Washington Post) takes us down the hatch on an unforgettable tour. The alimentary canal is classic Mary Roach terrain: the questions explored in Gulp are as taboo, in their way, as the cadavers in Stiff and every bit as surreal as the universe of zero gravity explored in Packing for Mars. Why is crunchy food so appealing? Why is it so hard to find words for flavors and smells? Why doesn’t the stomach digest itself? How much can you eat before your stomach bursts? Can constipation kill you? Did it kill Elvis? In Gulp we meet scientists who tackle the questions no one else thinks of—or has the courage to ask. We go on location to a pet-food taste-test lab, a fecal transplant, and into a live stomach to observe the fate of a meal. With Roach at our side, we travel the world, meeting murderers and mad scientists, Eskimos and exorcists (who have occasionally administered holy water rectally), rabbis and terrorists—who, it turns out, for practical reasons do not conceal bombs in their digestive tracts. Like all of Roach’s books, Gulp is as much about human beings as it is about human bodies. |
Table des matières
Introduction | 13 |
Tasting has little to do with taste | 23 |
Yourpet is not likeyou | 41 |
Why we eat what we eat and despise the rest | 61 |
Can thorough chewing lower the national debt? | 79 |
The acid relationship of William Beaumont andAlexis St Martin | 93 |
Someone ought to bottle the stuff | 107 |
Life at the oralprocessing lab | 131 |
Can the eaten eat back? | 167 |
The science ofeatingyourselfto death | 185 |
Fun with hydrogen | 223 |
Does noxiousflatus do more | 243 |
Is the digestive tract | 269 |
and other ruminations on death by constipation | 289 |
We can cureyou but theres | 311 |
Acknowledgments | 329 |
Autres éditions - Tout afficher
Expressions et termes fréquents
acid anal animal asked bacteria Beano Bilt body bolus bottle bowel called chew colon colonoscopy constipation defecation DePeters diet digestive tract dinner dogs drug e-mail eaters Elvis enema enzymes fecal feces flatus flavor Fletcher frog gases gastric gastric acid gastroenterologist hair head Horace Fletcher human hydrogen sulfide inside Journal Khoruts Kligerman Langstaff Levitt look man’s Martin meal mealworm meat methane Michael Levitt Mike Jones Moeller Montoya de Hernandez mouth Mütter Museum Nichopoulos nutrients nutritional odor olive oil one’s organ paper patient peanut people’s percent physician plastic pounds Presley’s prey protein python rats Rawson rectal rectum René Rodriguez saliva says Secor sensory Silletti small intestine smell snake someone sperm whale spit stomach stool superworm swallowed taste there’s thing tion told Tracy transplant tube Vliet whale what’s wine wrote
Informations bibliographiques
| Titre | Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal Book club kit Norton paperback |
| Auteur | Mary Roach |
| Édition | illustrée, réimprimée |
| Éditeur | W. W. Norton & Company, 2014 |
| ISBN | 0393348741, 9780393348743 |
| Longueur | 352 pages |
| Exporter la citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |