Describe the digestion of kikomando or the mixture of wheat, bread and beans in the human body
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Answer:
The same thing that happens to anything you eat…quick summary…food begins being digested in the mouth where it is chewed into smaller pieces and the enzyme amylase breaks down starch into simpler sugars that can be further broken down in the small intestine. About 30% of starch digestion takes place in the mouth. From there it goes to the stomach which secretes acid and powerful enzymes that continue the process of breaking down the food. From there to the small intestine which continues the breaking down process by using enzymes released from the pancreas and bile from the liver. Bile is a compound that aids in the digestion of fat and eliminates waste products from the blood. Peristalsis moves the food along and mixes it up with digestive secretions. Waste left over from the digestive process is passed through the colon and finally emptied into the rectum.
Rice is easily digestible, but sometimes people have trouble digesting beans. This is because our bodies lack the digestive enzymes to process oligosaccharides. We do have some of the enzyme, but it resides only in our stomach bacteria, and if we don’t eat beans regularly, we likely won’t have quite enough of it to digest them without trouble.
Because I never met a bean I didn’t like, I’m going to give you a couple of important tips. One, soak your beans before cooking them because it releases the tricky oligosaccharides that cause discomfort. You can do a quick soak or a long soak. For a quick soak, rinse and pick over the beans, then cover them with water (1 part beans; 3 parts water) and boil them for five minutes. Let them sit for an hour after, and then finish cooking through. For a long soak, just rinse and pick over, then put them in water overnight or for 8 hours. Drain and change water before cooking through. For most beans this will be about an hour. Two, don’t salt beans while you cook them; flavor them after they’re cooked. Salting will cook beans faster, but they’ll be tougher in texture and may not have the same digestibility that slow cooking and soaking afford.
And finally, the prevailing wisdom said that vegans had to eat a “complete” protein at each meal by pairing foods together - rice and beans, for example. We now know that is is not the case as long as vegans take care to get all essential amino acids over the course of each day. Whether or not they are eaten together is not essential, but it is a good way to remind yourself.