What happens to food
Follow a meal from your mouth to your bloodstream and watch it get taken apart.
Digestion is just disassembly: breaking food into pieces small enough to slip into your blood. Scroll down to follow a meal through the four stops.
Stop 1 · Mouth
It starts before you swallow
Chewing and saliva begin breaking starch into sugar. Hold bread on your tongue and it slowly turns sweet, that is the enzyme amylase at work.
Stop 2 · Stomach
A churning acid bath
Strong acid kills germs and starts unfolding protein so it can be taken apart. Food leaves as a thick soup called chyme.
Stop 3 · Small intestine
Where the real work happens
The pancreas adds enzymes and the liver sends bile. Every macro is finished off here and absorbed through millions of tiny villi into your blood.
Stop 4 · Bloodstream
Delivery to every cell
The pieces ride your blood, with the liver as the main checkpoint. Fat is the exception: it takes a detour through the lymph first and skips that checkpoint. From here it is all about energy: burn it now, store it, or save it as fat.