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From mouth where does the food go?

Our teeth chew the food into small pieces so that it can be swallowed. This swallowing takes the food down our oesophagus into our stomach.

The oesophagus is a muscular tube, about 25cm long, with a sphincter (valve) at each end. It's function is to transport food and fluid, after being swallowed, from the mouth to the stomach. No absorption of nutrients takes place in the oesophagus. A mouthful of food which has been chewed and swallowed is called a bolus. This is propelled from the pharynx (throat) into the oesophagus, and is swept towards the stomach in peristaltic waves. These muscular contractions are involuntary.

Our stomach produces chemicals to break the food down still more, then sends it into a long tube, the small intestine. While the food travels on its 20-foot trip through the small intestine, it is being broken down more and more by the intestine’s digestive juices until most of it is in liquid form. This liquid is then absorbed through the small intestine’s walls ( small finger like projections called villi) into our blood stream..

Our blood stream takes the liquid to all parts of our body to feed the  cells. The parts of food that our body hasn’t digested and cannot use go into a fat, coiled 5-foot-long tube called the large intestine.