Digestive System Basics
This process changes large food particles into smaller pieces by chewing and mixing, without changing the food's chemical makeup.
What is mechanical digestion?
Digestion begins here, where food is chewed and mixed with saliva.
What is the mouth?
This organ produces bile, a substance that helps with digestion.
What is the liver?
This is the main job of the small intestine emphasized in our chapter.
What is nutrient absorption?
Chewing food into smaller pieces is an example of this type of digestion.
What is mechanical digestion?
This process breaks food molecules into smaller molecules that the body can use.
What is chemical digestion?
After swallowing, food travels through this tube on its way to the stomach.
What is the esophagus?
This small organ stores bile until it is needed in the digestive tract.
What is the gallbladder?
These small projections increase the surface area available for absorption in the small intestine.
What are villi?
Breaking large food molecules into smaller usable molecules is an example of this type of digestion.
What is chemical digestion?
This process moves usable nutrient molecules from the digestive tract into the body's transport systems.
What is absorption?
This muscular organ stores and mixes food while digestion continues.
What is the stomach?
This accessory organ sends digestive secretions into the small intestine.
What is the pancreas?
Villi help the small intestine absorb nutrients efficiently because they increase this
What is surface area?
This part of the digestive system recovers water from material that remains after most nutrients have been absorbed.
What is the large intestine?
This four-part model summarizes what happens to food and nutrients from a meal until they can be used by body cells.
What is food → digest → absorb → cells?
Most nutrient absorption takes place in this long section of the digestive tract.
What is the small intestine?
The liver, gallbladder, and pancreas are grouped this way because food does not travel through them, but their secretions support digestion.
What are accessory organs?
This organ releases bile into the small intestine to help break large fat droplets into smaller droplets.
What is the gallbladder?
The community of microorganisms living in the digestive tract is known by this term.
What is the microbiome?
A student says digestion and absorption mean the same thing. This distinction explains why the statement is incorrect.
What is digestion breaks food down, while absorption moves usable molecules into the body's transport systems?
After the small intestine, remaining material enters this organ, where water is recovered and waste is formed.
What is the large intestine?
This pathway correctly traces bile from the organ that makes it, to the organ that stores it, and then toward the digestive tract.
What is liver → gallbladder → small intestine?
This explains why the small intestine has many folds and villi instead of having a smooth inner surface.
What is to increase surface area so more nutrients can be absorbed?
A meal has been broken down into usable molecules, but those molecules have not yet crossed from the digestive tract into the body's transport systems. This major step still needs to occur.
What is absorption?