The Digestive Team. (Digestion).(how the digestive system works; science experiment)

Bet you thought digestion starts in the stomach. Actually, it starts with your first bite of food. The mouth contains parts of the digestive system: the teeth, tongue, taste buds, and salivary glands.

As you bite into a crunchy apple, for instance, your teeth break it into smaller pieces. Your tongue pushes it to the back of the mouth. Taste buds on the tongue send a message that food has arrived. This causes glands in the mouth to squirt out saliva. Chemicals in the saliva attack the chewed apple, beginning the process of digestion.

Keep It Coming

After you swallow, it takes 10 seconds or less for the food to travel from your mouth to your stomach. A tube called the esophagus connects the mouth to the stomach. Each mouthful of food will spend the next three to six hours in the stomach. There food is churned into chyme (kim) a soupy mixture of food and digestive juices. In all, the stomach can hold about a quart of chyme at a time.

This soupy mixture then moves from the stomach to a tube called the small intestine. From there, the mixture goes into the large intestine. It usually takes six hours for food to travel through the length of the intestines.

Most of the food you eat is absorbed into the bloodstream from the small intestine. The food that isn't absorbed leaves the body through the large intestine.

The process of digestion takes about 12 hours. Digestion goes on all the time, even when you're asleep. Eating a variety of foods and drinking plenty of liquid will keep your digestive system in good working order.