Stomach-side up

Here's a disturbing thought.

If you were to pull a Rocky — that is, eat a raw egg — and then vomit at the perfect time, there's a moment at which those gastric contents would look like scrambled eggs.

That's because cooking and digesting change food in fundamentally the same way. Eggs turn to the color and texture they do when cooking because of how they're broken down.

It's not just some chemical process brought on by heat, as you may remember from high school science courses; it's just a matter of how eggs are changed by the process.

And yes, in general, that goes for other foods, too.

I'm no doctor, chef or chemist, but I'd wager that's why cooked foods are ideal for upset stomachs and testy digestive systems. Part of the work of digestion has effectively been done already.

Of course, that probably assumes the cooked food looks more like nutritious chicken noodle soup or rice bowl rather than a deep-fried Twinkie. But I digress.

If you like this fact, there's a whole lot more where that came from.

In her book, "Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body's Most Underrated Organ," internal medicine and gastroenterology doctor Giulia Enders details the digestive system from teeth to, err, the other end. If your inner scientist doesn't enjoy the intrigue of how tonsils play a role in the immune system, and even in weight, your inner child will desperately want to know how to poop most effectively (yes, position matters!), even if you don't want to admit it.

Hemophobes (those afraid of blood), stop reading.

Are they gone? Don't tell them that saliva is "basically filtered blood." Secreted out of papillae in your cheeks (yes, out of your cheeks and not under the tongue, or was I the only one surprised?), the blood is sieved by your salivary glands — with the red blood cells held back. So it might be like drinking dirty water that's been run through a purifier a few times.

Don't sneer at slobbery saliva, though. In fact, you might want to treasure it. One thing that's not filtered out is opiorphin, a compound that acts as a painkiller "stronger than morphine."

In a twist that could rival a telenovela priest running off with the farmhand's daughter who's secretly the illegitimate daughter of the rich lawyer's twin (and true heir! dun dun dun!), the appendix has a use.

Although you certainly can live without it if it goes haywire, one theory is that it aids in rebooting the digestive system, acting as a "storehouse of all the best, most helpful bacteria."

Don't worry, I haven't spoiled all the fun. From explaining why to wash fruits and veggies, why to avoid dish towels, and how food intolerances work, there's a lot more where these tidbits came from.

The perfect pooping position (laugh all you want, but who wants to waste hours over the course of their life doing it the hard way?) will certainly change my life.

But a few facts, like stomach-scrambled eggs, may just be the kind you whip out to one-up another geek in a gross fact contest.

Dust bunnies are mostly human skin, huh? Well don't even bother cooking breakfast tomorrow.

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You can reach Elena Johnson at ejohnson@cdapress.com.