Gulp : adventures on the alimentary canal

Summary: 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.

Record details

ISBN: 9780393081572 (hc.) :
ISBN: 0393081575 (hc.)
Physical Description: print
348 p. : ill. ; 22 cm.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: New York : W.W. Norton, c2013.

Content descriptions

General Note:	New September 2014.
Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references.
Formatted Contents Note:	Nose job: tasting has little to do with taste -- I'll have the putrescine: your pet is not like you -- Liver and opinions: why we eat what we eat and despise the rest -- The longest meal: can thorough chewing lower the national debt? -- Hard to stomach: the acid relationship of William Beaumont and Alexis St. Martin -- Spit gets a polish: someone ought to bottle the stuff -- A bolus of cherries: life at the oral processing lab -- Big gulp: how to survive being swallowed alive -- Dinner's revenge: can the eaten eat back? -- Stuffed: the science of eating yourself to death -- Up theirs: the alimentary canal as criminal accomplice -- Inflammable you: fun with hydrogen and methane -- Dead man's bloat: and other diverting tales from the history of flatulence research -- Smelling a rat: does noxious flatus do more than clear a room? -- Eating backward: is the digestive tract a two-way street? -- I'm all stopped up: Elvis Presley's megacolon, and other ruminations on death by constipation -- The ick factor: we can cure you, but there's just one thing.