Includes bibliographical references.

Nose job: tasting has little to do with taste -- I'll have the putrescine: your pet is not like you -- Liver and opinions: why we eat what we eat and despise the rest -- The longest meal: can thorough chewing lower the national debt? -- Hard to stomach: the acid relationship of William Beaumont and Alexis St. Martin -- Spit gets a polish: someone ought to bottle the stuff -- A bolus of cherries: life at the oral processing lab -- Big gulp: how to survive being swallowed alive -- Dinner's revenge: can the eaten eat back? -- Stuffed: the science of eating yourself to death -- Up theirs: the alimentary canal as criminal accomplice -- Inflammable you: fun with hydrogen and methane -- Dead man's bloat: and other diverting tales from the history of flatulence research -- Smelling a rat: does noxious flatus do more than clear a room? -- Eating backward: is the digestive tract a two-way street? -- I'm all stopped up: Elvis Presley's megacolon, and other ruminations on death by constipation -- The ick factor: we can cure you, but there's just one thing.