Most people defecate every day or every other day, depending on their diet and lifestyle. Constipation is having trouble emptying your intestines for more than 3-4 days, or having extremely hard stools that cause pain when you try to expel them from your body. You should eat foods that soften your stool to relieve constipation. Eating foods that harden them will make the condition worse.
Heavy foods like red meat, fried foods like fish and chips, baked goods with similar pastries, cakes, and bread often take a long time to digest. Food must pass through the stomach, large intestine, small intestine, colon, and then intestines before waste products are removed from the body as waste. Along the way, different nutrients and water are extracted and delivered to the part of the body that requires it. The longer the process takes, the more water is removed, the drier or harder the stool becomes. Furthermore, if the food is relatively dry at first or if an inappropriate liquid is consumed (excluding caffeine products and alcohol that can dehydrate), the final product (the stool) will later be dry or hard. [“Water is the best drink for a wise man.” said the French philosopher Henry David Thoreau.]
Red meat comes from large, strong animals, so it is tougher compared to the animals that white meat comes from. Therefore, its meat takes longer to break down in our body because the muscles are stronger. White meat is easier to digest because fish and poultry have smaller muscles compared to cattle and pigs.
Fried foods are generally oily. The oil makes food tasty and smoother in most cases, but it’s something the body doesn’t really need. The body must work harder to extract oil and fat from food so that it can be expelled. If the body’s digestive system is busy trying to neutralize other toxins that have entered the system, the fat will be placed in “storage areas” around the body until it has the resources to process it. When these “warehouses” are too full, we feel bloated and uncomfortable.
Products that contain a lot of wheat flour and oil that have little nutritional value. Flour is basically a carrier for other foods. For example, the puff pastry shell of a cake is an edible “bag” or package for the meat, vegetables or fruits that it contains, the bread is what holds a sandwich together. The crust or bread just makes the filling more palatable and easier to digest. But most breads and cakes are simply flour, oil, and air that contain no nutrients. Consuming more mass instead of filling will only clog your digestive system, especially if you are constipated.
As my title promised, I need to nominate the top 3 foods to avoid that someone with constipation should avoid. To narrow down the candidates, we must consider foods that fall into two or all of the three categories above and then select those that are consumed the most. The nominations are:
- Meat pies and sausage rolls contain red meat and flour.
- Fish and chips are fried and the dough contains flour.
- Grilled or broiled steak: Meat that is cooked relatively quickly does not break down fatty tissue and muscles, as well as slow cooked meat, so when it enters the stomach it has to be broken down more by digestive juices.
- French fries or chips are deep fried and very dry. Your body must use more water to digest this, so your stools will become harder if you are already constipated.
- Hard cheeses, as they have most of their moisture content squeezed out in their production process. In addition, they contain fat and protein from a large animal.
- Fried meat such as schnitzel, sweet and sour pork, fried chicken.
- Bacon and eggs or sausage and eggs.
- Salami and other processed meats.
My pick for the top three are meat pies, fish and chips, and French fries. What are yours?
