ANATOMY

Detailed explanation-1: -Mouth. The digestive process starts in your mouth when you chew. Your salivary glands make saliva, a digestive juice, which moistens food so it moves more easily through your esophagus into your stomach. Saliva also has an enzyme that begins to break down starches in your food.

Detailed explanation-2: -A digestive enzyme in saliva called amylase (pronounced: AH-meh-lace) starts to break down some of the carbohydrates (starches and sugars) in the food even before it leaves the mouth.

Detailed explanation-3: -Figure 2: The digestive processes are ingestion, propulsion, mechanical digestion, chemical digestion, absorption, and defecation.

Detailed explanation-4: -Mechanical digestion in the oral cavity consists of grinding of food into smaller pieces by the teeth, a process called mastication. Chemical digestion in the mouth is minor but consists of salivary amylase (ptyalin, or alpha-amylase) and lingual lipase, both contained in the saliva.

Detailed explanation-5: -Digestion works by moving food through the GI tract. Digestion begins in the mouth with chewing and ends in the small intestine. As food passes through the GI tract, it mixes with digestive juices, causing large molecules of food to break down into smaller molecules.