Does space affect an astronaut’s digestion?

Moment of Um

American Public Media

Kids & Family, Education For Kids

4.4 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 15 May 2025

⏱️ 5 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We chew our food, swallow it, and our stomach goes to work on digesting! Our bodies absorb the nutrients they need and then we poop out the rest. Here on Earth, the whole process takes somewhere between one to three days. But what about in space? Do astronauts digest food as quickly as they do on Earth? We reached out to space scientist and science communicator Maggie Aderin-Pocock to get the answer!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey friends. It's Moment of Um producer Anna Goldfield. I want to just take a minute to talk to the adults listening about public media. You may have heard that public media is facing federal budget cuts, and that includes Moment of Um and all your favorite Brains on Universe podcasts. If you want to protect your favorite public media programming and podcasts like this one,
0:21.7	visit Americanpublicmedia.org slash action to learn how you can help.
0:27.5	One more time, that's Americanpublicmedia.org slash action.
0:32.8	Thanks so much for standing up for public media.
0:36.7	From the brains behind brains on, this is the Moment of Um.
0:47.3	Moment of Um comes to you from APM Studios. I'm Sand and Totten's large intestine.
0:55.3	Um. Hey you. Small. studios. I'm Sand and Totten's large intestine. Um,
0:57.2	Hey you, small intestine, aka mini-me.
1:00.8	You okay? You're always so happy and gurgly, but today you kind of seem bummed out.
1:08.1	Ugh, it's just, I'm so bored.
1:10.4	Bored? What's boring you? Every day it's the same. Eat, it's just, I'm so bored. Bored?
1:12.1	What's boring you?
1:13.6	Every day it's the same.
1:14.9	Eat, excrete, repeat.
1:20.0	We get sandin's overnight oats, his chickpea salad sandwiches, his vegan pizza, and it's all in and out in less than three days.
1:21.5	I'm a digestion artist.
1:23.7	I can't work like this.
1:24.7	I just, I need a change. Is there a way to slow our system down, add some twists and turns? Something.
1:30.1	Hmm, I wonder, what if we got sand and to stand on his head? No, he did that meditative handstand yoga
1:36.1	retreat last summer, remember? Didn't change a thing. Or we could put him some more really cold? Would that do it?
1:43.4	He used to live in Minnesota. Gah! I know. What if we put him in really cold? Would that do it? He used to live in Minnesota.
1:44.7	Gah!
	...

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