You're asking me to quote the research I've consulted that contradicts your argument, quoted & BBM below?
I'm not sure how you've determined this to be an impossibility. It is possible, it is plausible, and research indicates such; from the link @ Colorado State:
How long does food stay in my stomach? How long is it before a meal reaches the large intestine? The answer to such commonly-asked questions is not necessarily simple.
First, there is considerable normal variability among healthy people and animals in transit times through different sections of the gatrointestinal tract. Second, the time required for material to move through the digestive tube is significantly affected by the composition of the meal. Finally, transit time is influenced by such factors as psychological stress and even gender and reproductive status.
It is unlikely that the only food consumed by JonBenét, on the 25th, was pineapple. We don't know how often, how much, nor how 'mixed' her diet was Christmas Day. Assuming JonBenét had eaten foods other than pineapple, periodically, on the 25th then we can rely somewhat on the averages listed from the same source, below:
50% of stomach contents emptied---2.5 to 3 hours
Total emptying of the stomach---4 to 5 hours
50% emptying of the small intestine---2.5 to 3 hours
Transit through the colon ---30 to 40 hours.
http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/digestion/basics/transit.html
Greetings,
Mama. A few points about your reference...
The last two time periods are irrelevant to the discussion because they are related to the process after food has emptied from the small intestine. The pineapple was found in the duodenum. The first two time periods are going to depend largely on the amount of food consumed and what it consisted of. This is the problem with using average time periods. If the pineapple was consumed by itself in a period of time well after any other foods, it would take less time to pass because it would be the only thing in the stomach being processed. If, OTOH, it was consumed within at short time frame along with other foods (cracked crab, cake, candy, whatever) it would be mixed in with those other foods in the stomach. The stomach doesn’t separate each food type from one another and process them individually. It would all be processed closely together, and the mass of ingested and mixed food would be passed on to the small intestine in smaller amounts. The foods with higher fiber content (pineapple, for instance) would take no longer to pass through the stomach than other foods, but they will be less digested than the other foods. This is why some foods might be mixed together and not necessarily passed in the same order as consumption.
The above referenced article also says (and this is important on either side of the argument):
Studies of gastrointestinal transit have clearly demonstrated two related phenomena important to understanding this process:1. Substances do not move uniformly through the digestive system.
2. Materials do not leave segments of the digestive tube in the same order as they arrive.
In other words, a meal is typically a mixture of chemically and physically diverse materials, and some substances in this mixture show accelerated transit while others are retarded in their flow downstream.
What it does not say, but should be apparent, is that large amounts of ingested food will take longer to process completely. With lesser amounts consumed, the process will be much quicker. Every mouthful of food swallowed is called a
bolus. In the stomach, each bolus begins the digestion process and (depending on its content) will be effected more or less by the chemicals and enzymes in the stomach. Once it passes out of the stomach into the small intestine, it is called
chyme (the semifluid mass of partly digested food expelled by the stomach into the duodenum). From Wikipedia:
“It results from the mechanical and chemical breakdown of a bolus (a mass of food that has been chewed to the point of swallowing) and consists of partially digested food, water, hydrochloric acid, and various digestive enzymes. Chyme slowly passes through the pyloric sphincter and into the duodenum, where the extraction of nutrients begins. Depending on the quantity and contents of the meal, the stomach will digest the food into chyme in anywhere between 40 minutes to a few hours.”
(The duodenum is simply the first section of the small intestine. It’s also known, and referred to in JonBenet’s AR, as the “proximal portion of the small intestine.” Its name comes from the Latin for “12 finger widths” -- the physician’s reference to its length.)
While it is true to state as a generality that foods can take up to a certain length of time to process, taken into consideration should be the total amount of food being processed for a more accurate time estimate. With little else found in JonBenet’s upper digestive tract, it is unrealistic to assume it could have been consumed on the upper limits of digestive time periods. Therefore, it was most likely consumed within only a couple of hours of her death when the digestive process ceased.
Lagniappe:
If it is helpful to know exactly how digestive tract content is examined in an autopsy, the following describes the process (copied from
A Text-book of Legal Medicine and Toxicology, by Walter Stanley Haines, and Frederick Peterson):
The stomach and duodenum may be examined in situ by making an incision with the enterotome, or by continuing the incision eventually already made into the duodenum in examining the patency of the bile-ducts, from the pylorus along in the anterior wall, a little below and parallel with the lesser curvature and out through the part of the esophagus that still remains. Care should be taken to empty the stomach before the incision becomes so large that the contents cannot be retained by holding up the margins of the opening. Simultaneously the duodenum, or that part not already exposed, may be examined by cutting it open with the enterotome, the hepatic flexure of the colon, and the transverse colon being first loosened and turned downward.
In the majority of medicolegal cases, and especially when poisoning is not definitely excluded from the start, the stomach and duodenum are to be removed unopened from the body. A ligature is placed around the lower end of the esophagus, the diaphragm being divided so as to expose this part of the esophagus freely, and then the attachments along the lesser and greater curvatures are divided, the duodenum is dissected loose, and a double ligature placed securely at its lower end, between which it is then cut across. After emptying the contents into a suitable jar, the organs may be incised as above and the mucous membrane examined.
Probably more than anyone wanted to know, but we may as well put it out there so we understand what was done to look at the contents. There’s a lot more about the autopsy process that I’m sure no one would want to hear about.
