Digestion Journey
Trace food through the mouth, oesophagus, stomach, small intestine and large intestine, and learn where carbohydrates, proteins and fats are broken down and absorbed.
Before you try
What if your stomach stopped making acid? What would happen to your lunch?
Try it out
Interactive activity
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What happened?
Move a control to see what changes and why.
The journey is sped up and reduced to a single path. Real digestion takes many hours, uses many enzymes, and depends on what the food is made of.
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Try these ideas
- Follow a piece of bread and see where its digestion starts.
- Follow a piece of chicken. Where do proteins break down?
- Compare how fibre travels compared with the others.
Why it works
Digestion breaks food into pieces small enough to pass into the blood. Teeth and saliva start on starch in the mouth; the stomach churns food with acid and protein-digesting enzymes; the small intestine finishes the job with help from the liver (bile) and pancreas, and absorbs the nutrients; the large intestine absorbs water.
Pick a food, then step the bite through each organ. The panel explains what is happening, which enzyme is working and what gets absorbed. The whole trip takes about one to two days in a real body.
Check your understanding
Question 1 of 3
Where does digestion of starch (carbohydrate) begin?
Where are most nutrients absorbed into the blood?
What is the main job of the large intestine?
Explain it in your own words
What changed? Why did it happen? Where might you notice this in everyday life?
For parents & teachers
- Chew a plain cracker for a minute. Why does it start tasting sweet?
- Ask: why should we chew food well?
- Measure a 7-metre string: that’s roughly the length of the small intestine!