Firstly, for a person to turn food into energy, he/she must start eating it. One must take it into his/her oral cavity or mouth and start to masticate or chew. This is actually where the digestion process begins. The mouth is breaking down the food into several smaller pieces so it can be easier to absorb. If one studies the design of the mouth, he/she will understand that it was especially designed for the braking down of food. The top of the mouth contains a hard palate which is a perfect place for the

smashing of food. Anterior to the hard palate is the soft palate consisting of mostly muscle. The teeth surrounding the mouth can both chop up and grind up food. Moreover, the main worker within the mouth, the tongue, moves around the food within the mouth. It consists of skeletal muscle which is connected to the skull and the hyoid bone. The muscle is kept in place by the frenulum which is inferior to the tongue at the bottom of the mouth. On the superior side of the tongue, there are special nerves that gives the food we eat a taste. They are called vallate papillae or taste buds. This equipment in the mouth allows for the physical breakup of food. However, more is happening inside the mouth during mastication than it might appear to the naked eye.

As the bile is led down to the intestines through the common bile duct, the pancreas adds more enzymes. The pancreas which is within the “C”-shaped curve of the duodenum makes the enzymes that are vital in the digestion process. These enzymes help to further break down the chyme into chemical energy for the body. These enzymes include sucrase (for cane sugar), lactase (for milk sugar), and maltase (for malt sugar). After the synthesis of these enzymes, it travels down the pancreatic duct to the duodenal papillae. At the major and minor papillae, both the bile and the pancreatic enzymes are released in the duodenum.

Now remember that the GI tract is one long tube that technically isn’t the inside of your body? Notice how food turns into a bolus and then into chyme as it is broken down further and further. The chemical energy of the food is beginning to be released. However, the rest of the body hasn’t even seen this chemical energy yet. It needs to be absorbed in a special way, through the small intestines. It is about 7 meters long and is split into three sections: the duodenum, the jejunum, and the ileum. The main function of the small intestines is absorption. With more surface area, there is increased absorption. That is why the small intestine contains many folds for more surface area for the absorption of the needed chemical energy from the chyme. It’s folds are called plicae. Within those folds there are more folds called villi. Within those villi there are even more

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