Question

You have just eaten a ham and cheese sandwich for lunch. Explain the all of the digestive processes (mechanical and chemical) that occur as you eat then digest the sandwich. Start in your mouth and finish at the end of the small intestine. Be sure to include all of the digestive organs and enzymes involved and specify how the carbohydrates, lipids, and proteins are broken down and absorbed.

Answer 1

The digestion starts with the buccal cavity or mouth by chewing the food. Teeth break the ham and cheese sandwich into small and digest the starch present in the food with help of the amylase enzyme present in saliva. The small chewed particles of food mixed with saliva called bolus move to the stomach.

In the stomach, there is HCl acid present that killed any harmful microorganism present in the bolus and digests the protein present in the ham and sandwich by pepsin enzyme secreted by the parietal cells of the stomach.

Lipase digest fat present in the cheese of sandwich by gastric juice. Small intestine digest fat by lipase protein by protease and carbs by amylase.

Absorption takes place in the small intestine that contain numerous villi’s projections in the cell lining for absorption in the small intestine.