Digestion

[Melissa83]

Hello, could anyone explain to me why it is important that food is broken down in stages Thanks in advance! :o)

[Champagne]

Food is broken down in order to gain nutrients. Simple as that.

It's done in stages because that's just the way our bodies are designed. The stages take place as the food passes through our body.

1) mouth: chewing causes release of saliva which contains enzymes to help break down food to a swallowing size!
2) stomach: food is broken down further by digestive fluids.
3) small intestine: 3 further bodily fluids are released to finalise the digestion and then the body absorbs all the nutrients.
4) large intestine: basically where anything leftover is ejected from the body, except for fibre which is stored here.

Er, that's really only a rough outline that I remember from biology classes!!

So in short, food is broken down in stages because otherwise it would simply not go into the body! Unless maybe you liquidize all your food first, but I wouldn't recommend that. :o\

[aurelia]

That's why there always nagging all of us saying we don't chew our food enough and that we eat too quickly. It's good fro the bowle to eat sklowly and this in turn can help to prevent diseases like bowle cvancer and eosophagul cancer. People who have a high aci content like myself sometimes have to take medications to remove the acid fromthe stomach as the acid backflow from the food breaking down coulod in time lead to stomach ulcers or the oesophagul cancer as mentioned earklier. sorry to seem a little morbid.