← 🫀 Human body · usually met in Std 6-10
Breaking food into pieces small enough to cross into the blood — part mechanical, mostly chemical, and taking most of a day.
Chewing and the churning of the stomach do the mechanical part. The chemistry is done by enzymes, each specific to one kind of food: amylase in saliva begins on starch, protein-digesting enzymes work in the acid of the stomach, and the small intestine finishes everything with help from bile, which breaks fat into droplets so enzymes can reach more of it.
Absorption happens in the small intestine, whose lining is folded and covered in finger-like villi — again, surface area is the whole design. What is left passes to the large intestine, where water is reclaimed and gut bacteria work on the residue. The journey from mouth to exit typically takes between a day and two days.
Want to see it moving? Search YouTube for “Digestion” ↗ — we send you to the search rather than to one video, because a link to one video eventually rots.
This entry was written for Star Student in our own words — it is a summary, not a source. Here is where the people who actually hold these facts keep them. Go and check.
Your own textbook ↗Balbharati publishes the textbooks free to read online. Your chapter is the thing to check first — an encyclopedia is a summary, and the syllabus is the syllabus. World Health Organization ↗Health facts stated carefully, and updated when the evidence changes.Last gone through: 1 October 2026 · How these entries are written
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