1. Digestion: The 24-Hour Food Factory

2. Digestion: A two-part process Mechanical digestion takes place in your mouth and your stomach. Your teeth break food into small pieces that you can swallow without choking. In your stomach, a churning action continues to break food into smaller particles. Chemical digestion occurs at every point in the digestive tract where enzymes and other substances such as hydrochloric acid and bile dissolve food, releasing the nutrients inside.

3. Understanding How Your Body Digests Food Eyes and Nose- when you see an appetizing food, you experience a conditioned response (your thoughts tell your digestive organs to get ready for action)….when you smell an appetizing food, the receptors cells communicate with your brain which sends messages to your mouth and digestive tract. The sight and smell of food makes your mouth water and your stomach contract in anticipatory hunger pangs.

4. Mouth The mouth- your teeth chew and grind the food so that you can swallow without choking and you break off the indigestible wrapper of fibers surrounding the edible parts of some foods (fruits) so that your digestive enzymes can get to the nutrients inside. ~Salivary glands under the tongue discreet saliva which moistens and compacts foods, and provides amylases, enzymes that start the digestion of complex carbohydrates (cracker).

5. Turning starches into sugars Put a small piece of unsalted, plain cracker on your tongue. Close your mouth and let the cracker sit on your tongue for a few minutes. Do you taste a sudden, slight sweetness? That is the salivary enzymes breaking a long, complex starch molecule into its component parts (sugars). Okay, you can swallow now. The rest of the digestion of the starch takes place further down, in your small intestine.

6. Stomach The stomach- your stomach is circled with strong muscles whose rhythmic contractions- called peristalsis.’- move food smartly along and churn your stomach into a sort of food processor that mechanically breaks down food. The stomach wall secretes stomach juices to help break down the food.

7. Small Intestine Open your hand and put it flat against your belly button, with your thumb pointing up to your waist and your pinkie pointing down…your hand is now covering most of the small space into which your 20 foot long small intestine is neatly coiled. Chyme spills from stomach and more gastric juices are released…while these chemicals are working, contractions in the small intestine continue to move the food down the tube so the body can absorb nutrients into the cells in the walls of the intestine Nutrients are absorbed by according to how fast they are broke down. ~fats take the longest to break down…that is why a high fat meal (hamburger) keeps you full longer than a meal of low fat carbs (plain tossed salad)

8. The Large Intestine After every useful, digestible ingredient other than water has been rung out of your food, the rest- indigestible waste such as fiber- moves into the top of your lg intestine known as your colon. The colon absorbs the water and squeezes the remaining matter into compact bundles know as feces. The feces pass down your rectum and out through your anus. Digestion is done!