Video narration
That bite is halfway down your throat, and you can feel it vanish. It began in your mouth, where chewing and saliva started breaking it down. You swallowed it, but gravity isn't doing the work. Muscles squeeze the food tube-the esophagus-moving the bite into your stomach. There, the stomach churns it with acid and digestive juices, breaking food into a soft mush. But this is only the beginning. The mush moves into the small intestine, a long, folded tube where digestion finishes and most usable nutrients pass into your blood. The stomach starts digestion. The small intestine is where most nutrients enter the blood. What remains enters the large intestine. Water is removed, and the leftover waste leaves your body. That bite becomes fuel, building material, or waste-and your digestive system sorts it all along the way.