The Digestive System

Question 1

What are the five main stages of digestion?

Answer 1

Ingestion, digestion, absorption, assimilation and egestion

Question 2

What are enzymes?

Answer 2

Enzymes are things that help break food up into very small pieces.

Question 3

What happens in the mouth?

Answer 3

The food is mechanically digested by the teeth and mixed with the saliva to lubricate the food for swallowing.

Question 4

What happens in the oesophagus?

Answer 4

Food is pushed along the tube from mouth to stomach by waves of muscles in a process called peristalsis

Question 5

What happens in the stomach?

Answer 5

Food is mechanically digested by the constant muscle contraction.
Glands in the stomach wall release hydrochloric acid which kills germs and provides the correct pH for the digestion of protein by a protease enzyme that only works in acidic conditions.
Rings of muscle at the exit of the stomach let the acidic partly digested food through into the duodenum bit by bit.”