The Digestive Process Flashcards
What is ingestion?
Putting food and drink into your mouth.
How many stages are in the digestive process?
5
What happens in digestion?
Large, insoluble molecules are broken down into small, soluble ones. These are digested mechanically and chemically.
How is food mechanically digested?
With teeth and stomach muscles.
How is food chemically digested?
With enzymes and bile.
Once food molecules have been absorbed, they’re moved into the body’s cells - in what process?
Assimilation
Mainly, where is water absorbed from?
The large intestine
What is absorption?
The process of moving molecules through the walls of the intestines into the blood.
What is absorbed by the small intestine?
Digested food molecules
What happens in egestion?
All of the undigested food forms faeces and leaves the body through the anus.
Where are the villi found?
In the small intestine.
Name the adaptations of the small intestine for absorbing nutrients:
(4)
- It’s very long, gives lots of time to break down and absorb everything before it reaches the end.
- Large surface area, the walls are covered in villi.
- Each cell on a villus has it’s own micro villi, increasing surface area further.
- Villi have a single permeable layer if surface cells and a good blood supply of capillaries to assist absorption.
Give an example of assimilation.
When amino acids (from digested proteins) are assimilated, they are used by cells to make cellular proteins.
