Re: Why cant a person gain nutritional benefits by just injecting food? meat?

You cannot just grind food up and inject it into the bloodstream because it hasn't been digested yet. Digestion is more than just chopping food up into little pieces - it involves breaking foods down into their constituent parts so that they can be absorbed. So, you don't absorb chicken - you absorb assorted proteins, etc.

Now, a person can survive without eating - you would have an IV that injects elemental nutrients (in other words, a bag of individual nutrients instead of "food"). Its hard on your veins but that can be dealt with. Or, you can give people a mixture of compounds directly into their stomach, where additional digestion would take place.

But, beyond all of this - my question is, why would you want to? There is a lot more to eating than just digesting food to supply energy. For many of us, eating is a very social occasion. What do most of us do when we visit home or meet friends? We eat. Many childhood memories revolve around eating. So, as long as we can, we should avoid injecting food.

Thanks for the question.

Jill Irvin

Ohio State University