I never did understand why I need to eat roughage.  Naomi explained it to me.

Food is digested in the stomach but roughage is not – these undigested carbohydrates pass through the small intestine (where sugars and glucose and fuel is absorbed into the body) until they reach the large intestine.  This is where most vitamins and minerals and some medicines are absorbed and without roughage to help travel the stuff through the system and slow it down, this absorption cannot happen.

The large intestine is also home to trillions of ‘good’ bacteria that feed on the undigested food that enters it.  And why is that good?  Because the good bacteria produce vitamins K and B12 and assist with absorption of other water soluble vitamins and keep the bad bacteria in check and they soften the roughage so that it can pass out of the body.

So my question is:

Is it possible that I could become malnourished even though I consume the right amount of vitamins – if I did not take in roughage along with the vitamins?  That roughage is the delivery system, the train.  Without roughage the vitamin c would simply whoosh through and – as the scietists put it – I would just pee it out?  WIth roughage, such as eating a whole orange, everything moves though the system at a more decorous pace giving time for the parcels of vitamins to be handed over to the body?

 OK… more than a question.