Digestion Starts in the mouth Digestion Starts in the mouth. (Buccal Cavity) Your teeth and Jaws crush and grind food to mix it with saliva, which contains the enzyme amylase that begins the breakdown of starch. You then swallow the food, which enters the oesophagus, the tube that connects your mouth to your stomach. It takes around 3-6 seconds through the process of peristalsis for the food to reach the stomach. The stomach acts as a giant mixing bowl, turning the food into a liquid called chyme. Lining your stomach are cells which produce and release gastric juices containing enzymes which assist with the breakdown of food and kill any bacteria present. As the chyme moves through your small intestine, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fatty acids and sugars are absorbed by your intestinal wall. From the stomach the chyme passes to your duodenum and then to your small intestine, a tube about 6m long. As it enters your small intestine, the chyme is mixed with digestive juices, this time from the pancreas. Pancreatic juice contains bile made by the liver as well as enzymes to further assist with the breakdown of carbohydrate, protein and fat. It also neutralises the acid in the stomach. Your gall bladder stores and concentrates bile until it is required for digestion. The bile is released into your digestive tract to emulsify fats and neutralise the acids in partly digested food. Peristalsis continues to move the chyme through your digestive system to your large intestine, and eventually the rectum and anal canal.

You need to describe the structure of the digestive system? You need to describe the functions of the digestive system? Digestion, Absorption, Excretion.