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Similar devices exist to this but this one does it without surgery.
The device consists of an internal barrier that is to be swallowed and positions itself along the connection from the stomach to the intestines. Two tubes will connect from the device to the outside world, one of the tubes inputs
material to the intestine and one takes material from the stomach, they can go out the mouth or even out the asshole as to not clog the mouth or cause gagging.
The user eats whatever foods they want and has pre-digested healthy foods put in their intestine to feed them nutrients. The foods go into the stomach making the user feel full and liquefying it to make it easier to suck out.
The food the user ate is then taken and burned for energy, as to not waste calories and make use of the food for energy production.
[link]
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Burning food for energy is so wasteful you may as well just throw it away. Tubes into the stomach are a really bad idea. How about a device that connects to the esophagus on one end and the belly at the other. Inside, it collects food in little balloons (swallow a compressed balloon packet to refill) which are reasonably resistant to stomach acid. The user then poops out whole balloons of food. Not sure how to make them flushable. |
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//whole balloons of food// |
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If [Max] and [8th] were here, they would be boisterously re-explaining haggis at this point. Just take that as read. |
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Didn't the humanoid robot basically do this in the Asimov stories? I mean eat a full dinner with the humans, and then open a hatch in its side and remove the food for later re-use? |
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Don't joke about the haggis. There are millions of people in the world who do not have enough to eat. The burning bit is very stupid but the distribution of the extracted food to the poor and hungry would be a great moral good. |
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// the distribution of the extracted food to the poor and hungry would be a great moral good.// |
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This is chewed up food mixed with saliva. Maybe objecting makes me a hypocrite, given that I proposed tasteless food bars as a dietary supplement, but even I wouldn't go so far as to collect balloons of food which have been chewed up, mixed with spit, sat at body temperature for hours to days, and then had their packaging pooped out. |
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Or [flireferret]'s version where the food is even more digested, having been through the stomach and removed thence by a tube. |
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And yet people pay money to eat at McDonalds. |
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The Digestive Process Overview |
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The digestive system is a complex network of organs that work together to break down food, absorb nutrients, and eliminate waste. The journey of food begins in the mouth and continues through several key organs before reaching the small intestine, where most nutrient absorption occurs.
1. Ingestion and Initial Processing |
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Mouth: When you eat, food is chewed and mixed with saliva, which contains enzymes that begin the breakdown of carbohydrates. The tongue forms a bolus (a soft mass of food) and pushes it to the back of the mouth.
Esophagus: The bolus is swallowed and travels down the esophagus through peristalsis, a series of coordinated muscle contractions that push food toward the stomach. This process takes about 5-8 seconds. |
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Lower Esophageal Sphincter: At the end of the esophagus, a muscle ring (the lower esophageal sphincter) relaxes to allow the bolus to enter the stomach.
Gastric Juices: The stomach mixes food with gastric juices, which include hydrochloric acid and digestive enzymes, breaking down food into a semi-liquid mixture called chyme. This process takes about 2-6 hours. |
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Pyloric Sphincter: Once the stomach is empty, the pyloric sphincter opens to allow chyme to enter the small intestine.
Duodenum: The first part of the small intestine, the duodenum, receives chyme and mixes it with bile and pancreatic juices, which are essential for further digestion.
Nutrient Absorption: The small intestine is lined with villi and microvilli, which increase the surface area for absorption. Nutrients are absorbed through the walls of the small intestine into the bloodstream or lymphatic system. This process takes about 3-5 hours. |
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After nutrient absorption, the remaining waste products move into the large intestine, where water is absorbed and the waste is transformed into stool.
Rectum: The stool is stored in the rectum until a bowel movement occurs, completing the digestive process. |
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What happens if you swallow a small battery powered insulated heating element that just burns the food then passes the resultant calorie free stuff? Be pretty farty with the steam I guess. Maybe have a small condensing unit. |
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Or could just eat less, might be a simpler solution. |
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You could have trained tapeworms which are wired up to wriggling-powered electrical generators. The tapeworm would eat a lot of your food, and would wriggle a lot, and you could have a power socket implanted on your side (perhaps USB-C) for charging your phone or other devices. |
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Hey, robot tapeworms, why not? Problem solved. |
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In a time of increasing automation approaching every productive endeavor, our society has an almost pathological more that each and every person is evil if he's not working. This is resulting in upheaval. |
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So a digestive system bypass for the food and a fistulized input for some nutrient goop? Major surgery, big risk of infection. Plus, the commercially-available nutrient goops do keep you alive, but I wouldn't say they're a healthy substitute for even a fairly poor diet. |
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//a small battery powered insulated heating element that just burns the food then passes the resultant calorie free stuff?// |
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You'd have to essentially combust the food, like those toilets that ashify waste. You need a lot of heat to boil off all the water before you can begin what is essentially combustion: long chain hydrocarbon molecules + O2 = CO2 + H2O. Two Problems: One, you can't generate that kind of heating power with a small battery pack. Two, where's the O2 coming from? Take a run on a treadmill and think of how much air your lungs get through to burn through a couple of hundred kCals, there's no good way to get that into the intestine, and it would be gassy. |
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Best to just burn off the excess in mitochondria via exercise, or some DNP. There's a recent startup out of UCSF that is exploring DNP-like molecules. DNP works perfectly well, it's main problem is just reputation IMHO. |
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//our society has an almost pathological more that each and every person is evil if he's not working.// |
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It's been said before that technologies that were going to end work in fact created jobs. But at some point aren't robots doing everything? Give it ten thousand years. We're still doing dishes and mowing lawns? I find that really hard to believe. |
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Work started as a way to survive, hunting and gathering, then the agricultural revolution allowed us to eat with only a portion of the population working on the food part. This opened up the path to cities, technology, science and unfortunately, guys who declared themselves lord over all the workers because they had: A- A sparkly hat and B- Soldiers who would kill anybody not impressed by the sparkly hat. |
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But work at its core is a survival thing, and no amount of sparkle on somebody's hat is going to convince people they need to work to show their allegiance to the sparklemaster. |
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Now we've had people who didn't have to work before, they don't necessarily just sit in a pile of gold coins throwing them in the air, they do their best to evolve. They learn, they take care of their families, they create, but that's just some people. Others might just sit on their asses NOT throwing gold coins in the air because A- there aren't any, being useless bobbles, and B- Because there's no work needed to be done (as mentioned) |
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So I predict a divergent path of evolution. Some might advance and some might de-evolve because they see no reason to. For instance, in 100,000 years might there be humans that don't use language anymore because there's no need to? Then might there be humans that speak so quickly that they sound like an old dialup modem? |
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Dunno, but evolution found a way to deal with the asteroid, I think we'll get along without work and sparkly hat guys using work as a control mechanism so they can get a dopamine rush from bossing people around. |
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That's if the robots don't kill us all. In which case never mind. |
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//Two Problems: One, you can't generate that kind of heating power with a small battery pack. Two, where's the O2 coming from?// |
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Small plutonium battery and a two way tube coming out the stinkter. |
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