Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
"BRISTOL STOOL SCALE"
Last year the University of Bristol celebrated their 100-year Anniversary.
The prestigious institution of higher learning produced nine Nobel Laureates and...
the Bristol Stool Scale, a medical tool used to classify the fecal form.
Seven different classifications.
Type 1, looks like rabbit droppings, separate hard lumps like nuts, hard to pass.
Number 2, looks like a bunch of grapes, sausage-shaped but lumpy.
Type 3, looks like corn-on-the- cob.
Type 4, like a sausage or a snake, smooth and soft.
Type 5, looks like chicken nuggets.
Think I'll never be able to look at chicken nuggets quite the same way ever again.
Type 6, looks like porridge. Type 7, looks like gravy.
Got to love them Brits.
The best "number-2" is a number 4, smooth and soft snake.
Unfortunately, only a minority of adults enjoy normal bowel function, and only about half pass normal stools.
And younger women, due to hormonal fluctuations throughout their cycle are particularly disadvantaged.
But this is for people eating a standard Western diet.
Wouldn't it be neat if some researchers compared bowel function measurements between individuals eating different diets?
It would and ...they did!
Bowel function was assessed. Omnivores vs. vegetarians vs. vegans.
Each subject was provided with a stool collection kit, a stack of boxes,
each used to accommodate one stool only, reducing the risk of specimens becoming squashed.
They weren't "messing around".
So meat eaters vs. plant eaters put to the test.
First question: Where did the meat eaters fall?
Does the average bowel movement of a meat eater look like rabbit droppings,
bunches of grapes, corn-on-the-cob, a smooth and soft sausage, chicken nuggets, oatmeal or gravy?
Meat eaters on average poop out corn cob stools.
What about vegetarians?
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,or 7?
Number 4. Right where we want to be.
And finally, what about vegans?
On average, number 4 as well.
But vegans actually ends up beating vegetarians because none of the vegans had the hard rabbit *** stools,
whereas a few of the vegetarians, like a bunch of meat eaters struggled to pass type 1s.
And the smooth vegan snakes were softer. Exactly 18% softer.
How could they tell?
Using a stool penetrometer, of course.
An editorial, in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, celebrated the finding this year,
calling on doctors to tell all their patients to eat a plant-based diet as vegetarian diets can only help push
patients into the comfortable middle range of the much-beloved Bristol Stool Scale.