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Digestive efficiency of intermittent fasting?

I wanna know if we absorb more of what we eat doing IF or with your average 4 meals per day.

My intuition tells me our digestive system would be more efficient with higher meal frequency and smaller quantities of food.

But maybe we spend more calories keeping our digestive system active all day long?

I can’t imagine our organs being able to absorb all the food in one take but when you spread it out in smaller portions should be easier?

I’m not asking this from a dietary perspective, just from an efficiency point of view. Having a limited amount of calories to consume per day, what would be the smartest choice to absorb most of it?

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Answer

Hmm an active digestion vs absorption are two different things I reckon. In terms of certain minerals/ micro nutrients, there are water soluble and fat soluble pathways for efficient absorption. I believe it’s the delivery of the nutrients, aka what combinations of food you’re taking in that would be the greatest factor. I do see your point about surface area of the intestine vs smaller surface area of food. I don’t think there’s enough studies out there tbh. Like the other comments you’ve got living bacteria to factor in other than the basic mechanics of “digestion”

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