Frightening factoid: That ‘Big Gulp’ is too big

According to the Internet, the average human stomach can comfortably hold about 32 ounces (just under a litre) of fluid. Of course, in a highly-Westernized culture that comes dangerously close to celebrating obesity, I suspect that the “average” stomach can hold quite a bit more.

Case in point: The “Double Gulp” from 7-11, which is a fountain drink designed for consumption by a single person, and which is sold in a portion size of 64 ounces.

Yes, the Double Gulp is appropriately named — it’s twice as big as your stomach should be able to handle. Yikes.

If the science quoted by TodayIFoundOut.com is correct, your stomach can absorb that amount of liquid only slowly:

Now, your stomach can process liquids at about a rate of 200-400 ml an hour according to research done by Shils et al. in 1994. The rate mostly depends on what else is in your stomach at the time of digestion. Generally speaking, an empty stomach will digest the liquid fastest. This means that if you want to actually drink the entire double big gulp without needing to vomit or otherwise stretch your stomach to extremes it’s not meant to handle, the absolute quickest you could do it, assuming starting on a completely empty stomach and not lucky enough to be an American with our lifetime of practice stretching our stomachs to extremes, will be approximately 4.73 hours.

Here, I will pause to shamefacedly admit that in my college days, I would regularly play extended games of Risk while eating a “family-sized” bag of chips, probably a big bag of 5-cent candies, and drinking a Double Gulp. Dear me.