Stop 1: your mouth
Digestion starts before you even take a bite. Just smelling or seeing tasty food can make your mouth water!
Your teeth cut and grind food into small pieces. Your spit, called saliva (suh-LYE-vuh), makes it wet and slippery. Saliva even starts breaking down starches, like in bread and crackers.
Try it: chew a plain cracker for a long time before you swallow. It may start to taste a little sweet, because your saliva is turning starch into sugar.
Your tongue rolls the chewed food into a soft ball and pushes it to the back of your throat. Gulp!
Stop 2: the food pipe
The swallowed food slides into your food pipe. Muscles squeeze it down in waves, and it reaches your stomach in a few seconds.
While you swallow, a flap called the epiglottis covers your windpipe, so the food goes down the right way.
Stop 3: the stomach
Your stomach churns the food with strong acid and juices. After about 2 to 4 hours, it's a thick, soupy mix called chyme.
The stomach lets the soup into the small intestine a little at a time.
Stop 4: the small intestine and its helpers
The small intestine is a long, coiled tube where most of the digesting and soaking up happens. Food spends a few hours here.
Three helper organs send juices in. The liver makes bile, which breaks up fat. The gallbladder stores the bile and squeezes it out. The pancreas sends juices that break down starch, protein and fat.
The tiny pieces, called nutrients, pass through the walls of the small intestine into your blood. Your blood carries them all over your body.
Stop 5: the large intestine, and out!
What's left moves into the large intestine. It soaks up water, and trillions of helpful bacteria munch on the leftovers. This part of the trip is often the slowest, a day or more.
What remains is poop. It waits at the end of the large intestine until you go to the bathroom.
For most people, the whole trip from bite to poop takes about one to three days, and sometimes a bit longer. Every body has its own speed, and it depends on what you eat.
Fiber and water, the trip helpers
Fiber is the tough, stringy part of plants. Your body can't digest it, but it helps food keep moving and it feeds your gut bacteria.
You'll find fiber in fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts and whole grains like oatmeal and brown rice.
Water helps too. It keeps food soft and moving, and it keeps poop easy to push out.