Food Processing in Human Body System

Food Processing in Human Body System. Foods are very important to human body. According to Vittadini et al. (2001), foods provide energy that isneeded for human in order to do daily activities. Besides that, food is important for growth and it supplies vitamins and minerals to repair any damage in human skin and also prevent the body to get illnesses easily (Vittadini et al., 2001). Human body cannot use food that they eat directly until it is broken down into small molecules(Campbell et al., 2008). Therefore, the food needs to be process first. Food processing in human body systems consists of ingestion, digestion, absorption and elimination (see figure 1). The first stage of food processing is the ingestion, the act of eatingfollowed by digestion processes(Campbell et al., 2008).The process of food broken down into simple molecules that been absorbed by the human body is called digestion.Digestion is split into two different processes which are physical digestion (grounding of large molecules of food into smaller particles) and chemical digestion (enzymes released into the digestive tract use to break down large polymeric biomolecules into monomers or oligomers (dimers or trimers). Both ingestion and digestion occurs in the mouth or oral cavity(Campbell et al., 2008). Physical digestion begins in the oral cavity. There are three major parts of the oral cavity: teeth, tongue and salivary glands. Hoebler et al. (1998) stated that the food was break down into smaller pieces by using teeth, tongue and saliva. In the mouth, teeth act as a tool that mechanically reduced size of food into small pieces. However, the tongue manipulates food bolus by pushing it for swallowing (Hoebler et al.,1998). The last part of the oral cavity is salivary glands. In the salivary glands, it secretes saliva. Furthermore, enzyme that contain in the saliva is salivary amylase (common form of starch). This enzyme helps to break down amylase into maltose(Campbell et al., 2008).

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