Have you ever thought about how long the food takes to digest completely? Well, it depends on the individual, as well as on the number of types of food.
After you eat, the food generally takes 24 to 72 hours to move through your digestive tract. The exact time depends on what kind of food you eat.
At first, the food travels quite faster, from your mouth to your small intestine. It then enters the large intestine for further digestion.
Absorbing water and, finally, eliminating undigested Food. It takes 36 hours for the food to move through the entire colon. Overall, from when you swallow food it leaves your body as waste material.
This process takes about 3 to 5 days, depending on the individual. At the same time, the entire digestive process is similar for everybody. The only difference is the time, Which you can calculate from the Food digestion time chart that is below.
| Food | Digestion time |
|---|---|
| Fruits | 30-40 minutes |
| Vegetables | 1 hour |
| Meat | 3-4 hours |
| Fish | 4-8 hours |
| Juices | 25-30 minutes |
| Any Improper combined diet | 8 hours |
Fruit Digestion Time
The digestion time depends on what kind of food you are eating. In the case of fruits, they are rich in fiber.
They consist of vitamins and minerals good for digestion, such as vitamin C and potassium. Fruits like watermelon, Oranges, and Bananas take less than 30 minutes to digest.
They get digested more rapidly because they are fiber-rich. Fiber-rich food helps the digestive tract to work more efficiently.
Fruits are edible, and they can be drinkable as well. You drink fruit in the form of smoothies. Fruit Smoothie Digestion time can be a bit different than that of fruits.
To better understand the digestion time of fruits and smoothies, you can look at the food digestion time chart.
| Fruit | Digestion time |
|---|---|
| Watermelons | 20 minutes |
| Grapes | 30 minutes |
| Apples | 40 minutes |
Vegetable Digestion Time
Vegetables and Fruits are in the same category as watery and fiber-rich. Thus it takes less than a day for the fruits and vegetables to get digested.
Vegetables such as cucumber, tomatoes, lettuce, and radishes take 30-40 minutes to digest. Some vegetables are a bit difficult to digest. One frequently asked question about vegetables is whether they take longer to digest.
The food digestion time chart shows the different digestion times that vegetables take.
| Vegetables | Digestion time |
|---|---|
| Tomatoes | 40 minutes |
| Spinach | 45 minutes |
| Carrot | 50 minutes |
Also read: Protective food chart
Meat Digestion Time
Meat, as you know, is a protein-rich food with fats and other complex compounds. According to different nutrition specialists, it probably takes two or more days for meat or fish to digest completely.
Protein-rich foods take more time to digest than normal food. This delay in the digestion process is due to fat and oils present in the meat.
They are complex compounds that delay emptying your stomach compared to other food items, animal products like meat and fish. These products take more time to digest than those fruits and vegetables.
Eating meat takes a lot of time to digest, and during this process, it creates lots of ammonia in our body, which then leaves our body in the form of urine. Thus drinking a lot of water while eating meat is necessary so that the meat digests a bit faster.
Making the digestion of meat a bit quicker involves
- Drinking lots of water.
- Use of salad while eating any meat dish.
- Eating fruits.
- Adding every other thing to your diet that digests quicker than meat.
To get a clearer picture of the time. You can see the Food digestion time chart for a meat dish to digest appropriately.
| Meat | Digestion time |
|---|---|
| Chicken | 1-2 hours |
| Beef | 3-4 hours |
| Pork | 4-5 hours |
Meat vs Vegetable Digestion Time
Upon comparing the digestion time of meat with vegetables, the result will be more evident that vegetables are faster to digest than meat.
This comparison won’t be enough to understand how it differs from vegetables and why it takes so long to digest. The reasons are:
- First of all, vegetables are rich in fiber, and as you know, fiber-rich food materials make the digestion process much more efficient and quick. This quickness is because of the vegetable’s watery nature.
- In the case of meat, it is a protein-rich food, including oils. These fats and oils make digestion a bit harder for the digestive system. These oils and fats are complex compounds, which cause the stomach to get empty.
So it becomes more evident that vegetables are faster digestible than meat.
Not all vegetables are easy to digest, but if you see it overall, there is no doubt that vegetables digest quicker than meat.
| Vegetables | Digestion time | Meat | Digestion time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tomatoes | 40 minutes | Chicken | 1-2 hours |
| Spinach | 45 minutes | Beef | 3-4 hours |
| Carrot | 50 minutes | Pork | 4-5 hours |
Nut Digestion Time
Nuts and seeds are also protein-rich, Which makes them difficult to digest. They take around 8-24 hours to digest due to their fats and dietary fibers.
People don’t eat nuts as a regular meal due to their longer digestion time. If you eat them as a typical meal, then there is a concern for you as you can get different diseases.
The most basic way of eating nuts is eating them in small amounts as snacks. Many questions people ask regarding nuts and their digesting time, the most frequent of which is, does soaked nuts digest easily?
The answer is no. It remains the same whether soaked or dry.
| Nuts | Digestion time |
|---|---|
| Nuts | 2-3 hours |
| Seeds | 1-2 hours |
| Avocados | 3-4 hours |
Conclusion
Digestion is the process that starts when you eat food. It travels from the mouth to the small intestine and the more extensive intestine trips around the colon.
This process involves breaking down food’s different chemicals in your digestive system. The food breaks down and gets digested.
The energy from the Food gets mixed with blood, whereas the non-digested material, also known as the waste materials, comes out of the body in feces.
Looking at the food chart tables above will guide you the best on which food takes how much time to digest. Until then, all the best!