Modelling the stomach

In this film, you can see a working mechanical stomach being used to demonstrate how the human stomach works.

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Running time: 4 mins 4 s
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Richard Faulks was part of a team that developed a model stomach to better understand the way food and other substances are processed by this organ. Building on previous research that used MRI to understand the forces involved, they built a machine recreating this.

The reality of the stomach's role in digestion might be surprising; many people assume it has a more vigorous action then it actually does. Normally, the model is used mainly to study how orally administered drugs are processed by the stomach, but in this example we show what happens when you feed it vegetable soup.

This video is part of the online content for ‘Big Picture: Food and Diet’.