Name: _______________________________________
The Digestive System
Every day people eat food. Some of the food becomes ______________ in the body. Before
getting rid of the wastes, the body _______________________ out the useful nutrients. Digestion
is the process of _____________________ down food into simple substances your body can use.
DIGESTION (starting from the top down):
 The starting point of the digestive system is the _________________. As you grind up the
food with your teeth, ________________ ________________ produce saliva, which break
down the chemicals in the food a bit. This allows the food to become mushy and easy
to _____________________. Your ____________________ pushes the tiny bits of food toward
the back of your throat.

The second part of the digestive tract is the ___________________________.
It is like a
stretchy pipe (about 10 inches long) that moves food from the back of the throat to
the _______________________. The muscles of the esophagus slowly squeeze the food
into the stomach, which takes about 2-3 seconds.

The stomach is like a ___________________, churning and mashing together all the small
bits of food into smaller and smaller pieces. It does this with help from the strong
muscles in the walls of the stomach and ___________________ juices. These juices also
help kill bacteria that may have been in the eaten food.
o The stomach has three important jobs:

To ___________________ the food you’ve eaten

To ______________ _____________ the food into a liquidy mixture

To empty to mixture into the _________________ ________________________

The small intestine is a long tube about ______ feet long packed beneath the stomach.
It breaks down the food mixture even more so your body can absorb all the vitamins,
minerals, proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. Food can stay in the small intestine for 4 to
5 hours while it digests. This is possible with help from the _________________________,
___________________, and ________________________________, which all send digestive
juices to different parts of the small intestines.
o The pancreas makes most of the juices that help the body digest _________ and
______________________.
o Gastric juices from the liver are called ______________, which helps to absorb fats
into the bloodstream. The liver also filters out harmful wastes turning them into
more bile. It also helps figure out how many nutrients will go to the rest of the
body, and how many will stay behind in storage.
o The gallbladder serves as a ___________________________ for bile, storing it until
the body needs it.

Once food leaves the small intestine, it enters the ________________ __________________.
It is a tube about 5 feet long. It has a larger diameter than the small intestine.
Remaining water and nutrients are removed, and the left over waste- parts of the food
that your body can’t use- are moved to the _____________________, which is the last
part of the digestive tract. The solid waste stays here until it is pushed through the
_______________.