PRESENTATION OUTLINE
Even before you eat, when you smell a tasty food, see it, or think about it, digestion begins. Saliva, or spit, begins to form in your mouth.
Your tongue helps out, pushing the food around while you chew with your teeth. When you're ready to swallow, the tongue pushes a tiny bit of mushed-up food called a bolus toward the back of your throat and into the opening of your esophagus, the second part of the digestive tract.
The esophagus is like a stretchy pipe that's about 10 inches long. It moves food from the back of your throat to your stomach. But also at the back of your throat is your windpipe, which allows air to come in and out of your body.
Your stomach, which is attached to the end of the esophagus, is a stretchy sack shaped like the letter J. It has three important jobs:
1. to store the food you've eaten
2. to break down the food into a liquidy mixture
3. to slowly empty that liquidy mixture into the small intestine
The small intestine breaks down the food mixture even more so your body can absorb all the vitamins, minerals, proteins, carbohydrates, and fats.
After most of the nutrients are removed from the food mixture there is waste left over — stuff your body can't use. This stuff needs to be passed out of the body.
Can you guess where it ends up? Well, here's a hint: It goes out with a flush.
