Translations:Gastrointestinal tract/27/en

Transit time

The time taken for food to transit through the gastrointestinal tract varies on multiple factors, including age, ethnicity, and gender. Several techniques have been used to measure transit time, including radiography following a barium-labeled meal, breath hydrogen analysis, scintigraphic analysis following a radiolabeled meal, and simple ingestion and spotting of corn kernels. It takes 2.5 to 3 hours for 50% of the contents to leave the stomach. The rate of digestion is also dependent of the material being digested, as food composition from the same meal may leave the stomach at different rates. Total emptying of the stomach takes around 4–5 hours, and transit through the colon takes 30 to 50 hours.