Jordan didn't know what was going on in his stomach. But after eating lunch and
going to recess, he stopped wanting to run around after a soccer ball. Was it something
he ate? Did he gobble his lunch too fast? Was he coming down with the "stomach
flu"?
Jordan was just about to ask his best friend, Nate, for some advice, when Jordan
felt like something moved inside his belly. Before he could take a breath, a giant
multicolored mess came out of his mouth. "Yuck!" yelled Nate. Jordan felt like yelling
too, but his nose was clogged and his throat burned so badly he could barely talk.
What just happened? Jordan just threw up, or puked. But what is puke? It goes by
many names: vomit, throw up, upchuck, gut soup, ralphing, and barf. Whatever you call
it, it's the same stuff: mushed-up, half-digested food or liquid that gets mixed with
spit and stomach juices as it makes a quick exit up your throat and out of your mouth.
Sometimes puke tastes bitter, sometimes it tastes sour. Sometimes it tastes like
the food you just ate, and it's often the color of what you last munched on, too.
For example, blueberry pie might churn up blue puke. A red ice pop might make red
puke. Your puke may be green sometimes, but that's not because you ate green beans.
Puke looks green when a chemical called bile (say: BYEL) mixes with it. This will
happen if the food that comes back up is squeezed from your intestines into your stomach
and then up your throat. Be sure to tell a parent if your puke looks green.
No matter what color it is, though, puke usually stinks — whether you've
eaten tuna fish, toast, or jelly beans.
How Does Your Body Do That?
Normally, your digestive
system carries food down your throat, into your stomach, and on through your intestines
until what's left of the food reaches the end of the line at your rectum and comes
out as a bowel movement (what you might call poop).
But if you have a virus or other germs in your stomach or intestine, eat food with
lots of bacteria (say: bak-TEER-ee-uh) in it, feel very nervous, or spin too fast
on the merry-go-round, your stomach or intestines might say "this food is stopping
here." When that happens, the muscles in your stomach and intestines push food up
instead of down and carry that food right back up to where it started — your
mouth.