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The digestive process begins in the mouth. Your teeth grind the food into smaller pieces that you can digest. The saliva from your salivary glands moistens the food.
Then the food enters a muscular tube called the esophagus. The muscles in the esophagus push the food into the stomach. The contractions that the esophagus makes are called peristalsis.
At the end of the esophagus, the food drops into the stomach. The stomach breaks the food down into simpler substances that the body can use. It does this with a highly dangerous acid called hydrochloric acid. The stomach protects itself by a coating of mucus. If the stomach did not have this coating, the hydrochloric acid would burn a hole through the wall of the stomach and cause ulcers.
The soup-like food leaves the stomach and goes into the part of the small intestine called the duodenum. This is where most of the digestion occurs. Bile from the liver breaks up the fat and the small intestine absorbs the nutrients and proteins of the food.
After 3-6 hours in the small intestine, the food enters the large intestine. This is where most or all of the water is absorbed from the food. The food spends about 18-24 hours in the large intestine. The waste of the food is then stored in the rectum and emptied out through the anus.
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