What Does Food Provide?

Food is essential for every human to survive. It is the fuel that we need to keep our bodies working. This article will go over food in general, as well as the different kinds of food that are available to us.

Food provides energy for our bodies. Digesting and breaking down the nutrients from the food into small digestible units also provides a small amount of energy called metabolic energy.

Food is also essential in an emergency where food may be scarce due to a natural disaster or zombie apocalypse (we hope not). In an emergency where food is low, the body will use the stored protein from our muscles to provide vital nutrients and energy. It also helps preserve muscle tissue by utilizing it before it is completely lost and turned into fat cells.

How Do We Take in Food?

How we take in food provides certain nutrients for the body. Digestion begins in the mouth before any of the other digestive processes start. The teeth break down food and move it through the esophagus into a filter on the stomach that works as a sieve to remove bacteria, debris, mucus, and undigested food (if you don’t brush your teeth very often). The esophagus is a pipe-like structure that runs from the back of the mouth to the stomach.

A stomach is a storage unit for food. It stores several meals’ worth of food and breaks it down using digestive enzymes and acid. The final product from the stomach is called chyme which is then transferred into the small intestine, where more enzymes are secreted to break down the molecules even further for better absorption into the body. After this happens, nutrients are absorbed into the bloodstream. The nutrients that aren’t directly absorbed into your bloodstream will travel to your large intestine, where bacteria process them in fermentation, which gives off methane gas as a by-product of waste elimination. Finally, the waste is eliminated through the anus in defecation.

The large intestine’s primary function is to absorb water from undigested food and to rid your body of solid waste. The mucus is then pushed to different parts of the colon for gradual elimination.