Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal - Softcover

`The funniest book [of the year] by far... almost every page made me laugh out loud.' * Sunday Times, Best Science Books of 2013 * `Witty, illuminating and at times astonishing.' * Mail on Sunday * `Witty [and] enjoyable' * Independent on Sunday * `The best kind of lavatory reading... exhaustive and irreverent' * Sunday Telegraph, paperback review * `Mary Roach is a science writer who looks very closely at normal things - and close up, lots of things look weird or horrifying... The bit you will talk about most is how prisoners hide things up their bottoms' * Evening Standard * 'Far away her funniest and most sparkling book' * New York Times * `Engrossingly gross' * Scotsman * 'The best kind of lavatory reading' * Sunday Telegraph * 'Insightful, sharp science writing that will have you snorting with laughter is Mary Roach's speciality' * New Scientist * `Disgustingly good... Roach takes a superbly witty prod at our innards.' * The Times * 'Roach writes clearly, with gallows humour...compelling' * Evening Standard * 'A wonderful read' * BBC Focus * 'Joyously funny and intrepidly smart' * Saga *

Eating is the most pleasurable, gross, necessary, unspeakable biological process we undertake. But very few of us realise what strange wet miracles of science operate inside us after every meal - let alone have pondered the results (of the research). How have physicists made crisps crispier? What do laundry detergent and saliva have in common? Was self-styled `nutritional economist' Horace Fletcher right to persuade millions of people that chewing a bite of shallot seven hundred times would yield double the vitamins? In her trademark, laugh-out-loud style, Mary Roach breaks bread with spit connoisseurs, beer and pet-food tasters, stomach slugs, potato crisp engineers, enema exorcists, rectum-examining prison guards, competitive hot dog eaters, Elvis' doctor, and many more as she investigates the beginning, and the end, of our food.