When you eat food, it goes on a journey through your body. Your stomach breaks food into tiny pieces so your body can use the nutrients. This process is called digestion.
Trace the path of food through the body using a simple diagram. Put a cracker in a sealed bag with a little water and mash it to simulate digestion. Discuss how the body gets energy and building materials from food. Talk about what happens when you feel hungry.
Children sometimes think food goes directly from the stomach to muscles or bones. They do not understand that digestion is a long process involving many steps and organs. Some children think the stomach is the only organ involved in digestion.
When you eat a bite of food, you probably do not think much about what happens next. But inside your body, an amazing process begins. It starts right in your mouth: your teeth chop and grind the food into smaller pieces while saliva — that watery liquid in your mouth — starts breaking it down. When you swallow, the food slides down a tube called the esophagus, which connects your mouth to your stomach.
Your stomach is like a muscular bag that squeezes and churns the food, mixing it with powerful digestive juices. These juices are so strong they can dissolve food into a thick, soupy mixture. This squeezing and dissolving can take a few hours, depending on what you ate. After the stomach has done its work, the soupy mixture moves into a long, winding tube called the small intestine. This is where the really important work happens — the tiny nutrients from your food pass through the walls of the intestine and into your blood, which carries them everywhere your body needs them.
Whatever your body cannot use — the leftover waste — keeps moving through your large intestine and eventually leaves your body when you go to the bathroom. The whole journey from mouth to exit can take a full day or even longer. So when you eat breakfast in the morning, your body might still be working on last night's dinner. That is why eating regularly throughout the day matters — your body is always busy processing food, and it needs a steady supply of good fuel to keep everything running.
No topics depend on this one yet.