In order for your body to grow, you must consider the foods that you eat that gives you energy and helps your body to run, think, work and even play.
There are six different kinds of nutrients that food contains and these different nutrients; vitamins, minerals, water, protein, fats and carbohydrates, help your body to be healthy.
Nutrients that are inside foods, are needed for anything living to survive. Some foods contain all of the six nutrients in one, while other foods contain just a few of the nutrients.
Some of the nutrients such as carbohydrates, fats and even some proteins are too big to be absorbed by the body and they must pass through the body through the blood.
In order for this to happen though, the body must break these nutrients down into smaller molecules and this is called digestion.
Digestion starts with the mouth and with the teeth, the saliva and the tongue.
The teeth help tear the foods, breaking them down, the saliva or the salivary glands, help moisten the food so that it is easier to swallow, and then the tongue helps to push the food and mix it with the saliva.
With all of this happening, a ball of food, or the bolus, is formed and the muscles in your mouth and throat helps to push the food down.
A flap closes off the trachea when you swallow so that the food does not enter the wind pipe.
This whole process is called ingestion, which means the process of taking food into the body.
The food, that is now basically liquid, then moves into the esophagus which is a muscular tube that is located between the mouth and the stomach and this tube leads into the stomach.
It takes around six seconds to move down the esophagus.
The esophagus is coated with a thick mucus that helps the food to move down easily.
When the muscles in the esophagus contract, this is called peristalsis.
Food digestion does not happen because of gravity alone, but due to the contractions (peristalsis) that happens behind the food.
The stomach is also a muscle and these muscles are used to mix the food and in the stomach are acids and enzymes which help to mix the food and continue helping with digestion of the nutrients.
The stomach is made up of three different layers of muscles and the churning of the stomach along with the chemicals such as pepsin and hydrochloric acid, allows the food to turn into smaller proteins.
The stomach is protected from these acids because of the mucus that coats the walls of the stomach.
In around 3-7 hours, the stomach continues to move through the digestive system, and it enters the small intestine.
Even though it seems that the stomach would have the biggest job of digesting, the small intestine plays the biggest role in this.
Here in the small intestine, many of the carbohydrates, fats and proteins are completely digested here.
The liver and the pancreas help to give juices to the small intestine that will help with the digestion. It takes 3-5 hours for the food in the small intestine to be digested.
Carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins and minerals go through the walls of the intestine and into the blood, this is called absorption.
Absorption is the process of moving nutrients from the intestines to the blood. The circulatory system helps to transport these nutrients to the body.
When the food travels from the small intestine, it is now full of food and water that is not digestible.
The indigestible food passes through by the appendix, which is shaped like a finger. It is unknown what the appendix is really used for.
The indigestible food goes into the large intestine, which is wider than the small intestine and horseshoe shaped.
Within 18-24 hours, the water is getting absorbed into the blood and traveling through the body. Helpful bacteria such as vitamin K and vitamin B is found in the large intestine and helps the body.
The food that is not digested is formed into a solid material. This solid material also contains dead bacteria, fats and even mucus. This is called waste.
This moves into the rectum for storage and then it leaves the body through the anus, at the bottom of the rectum.
This is called elimination. Elimination is the process of moving wastes from the body.