The Journey Through Your Digestive System
Your mouth kicks things off by chewing food into smaller chunks, whilst enzymes in your saliva immediately start breaking down starch into sugar. It's like having a head start on digestion before food even leaves your mouth.
Next stop is your stomach, where things get properly serious. Hydrochloric acid creates the perfect acidic environment for protein digestion to begin, whilst the stomach muscles churn everything into a fluid. This churning isn't just for mixing - it massively increases the surface area so enzymes can work more effectively.
The real magic happens in your small intestine. Your pancreas dumps in enzymes to continue breaking down starch, proteins, and lipids, whilst your liver releases bile to speed up fat digestion and neutralise all that stomach acid. The small intestine walls then absorb all these tiny food molecules into your bloodstream through diffusion and active transport.
Finally, your large intestine does the cleanup job by absorbing water back into your bloodstream. Those digested nutrients then get used to build new molecules your body needs or get burned for energy in respiration.
Remember: The small intestine is where most of the absorption happens - it's the real MVP of your digestive system!