Michael, I've often wondered about that: is it really "hard to disgest" or does it just take a long time to digest? I'm not saying I know the conventional wisdom is wrong, just that I'd like to know whether there really is evidence to support it. Plus I would have thought that anything your body doesn't want to digest is going to get flushed out with everything else.

And surely one-in/one-out is a function (yuk yuk - and yuck!) of what you eat as well as how healthy your digestive system is. A cup of serious coffee will open my sluices right up, for example, but I doubt it's an indication of anything much at all. On the other hand I've been assigned two servings of fruit every day, and that has a (less immediate) laxative effect that's probably very good.

I enjoy it anyway.