Digestion : What happens to the food after we eat them?

At the outset , we eat for taste and essentially energy.The former somehow exists for the procurement of the later. but one cannot overlook the influence of either.If not for taste and flavor, neither salt would be salty nor sugar sweet.The sense of smell in conjunction with feeling of taste triggers the salivary glands and aids the onset of food digestion process.Ruling out taste from the discourse, we will talk about food for energy.

The animal/human body is structured to absorb nutrients from food and convert them into energy instead of using the food source directly.This post has been put up to answer how things work in coordination for the same.

This entails a 3 step process until Defecation.

• Ingestion(food intake through the mouth)
• Digestion(breakdown of the food into nutrients)
• Absorption & Assimilation(uptake of the nutrients by the body)

Digestion of food:
Digestion of food in human beings is always a combination of both 

• Mechanical digestion(breakdown of food into smaller parts by teeth and esophageal muscles) and 
• Chemical digestion(uses digestive enzymes).

Taking chemical digestion into consideration , what all remain to be separated from food and digested are the macro nutrients which need to be broken down further to get absorbed and used up by the body.(micro nutrients get simply absorbed into the bloodstream after digestion of food).

Absorb-able form of macro nutrients:

The process:-

1. Mouth 
• Digestion starts here.
• Mechanical digestion of food chunks by teeth
• Saliva(containing Amylase) mixes with the food and some carbohydrates are broken down into glucose.
2. Esophagus(food pipe)
• Food experiences physical breakdown by muscles of the food pipe
• Food travels down to stomcah
3. Stomach
• Stores swallowed food and liquid 
• Produces and mixes HCL for acidic breakdown of the food (mostly proteins)
4. Small Intestine
• Mixes digestive enzymes with the food
• Amylase (carbohydrate digestion)
• Protease (protein digestion)
• Lipase (fat digestion)
• Bile (for fat digestion/produced by liver stored in gall bladder)
• HCL (from intestine)
• Macro nutrients get converted into their absorb-able forms and get absorbed into the bloodstream through the walls of small intestine.Blood transports nutrients through the body.
• Digestion ends here
5. Large Intestine
• Undigested component of food received
• Water removed from the undigested matter
• Dry waste transferred to the rectum for excretion

          Keep your Stomach Happy and Healthy :)