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Practice 6 HEALTHY MIND IN A HEALTHTY BODY
Academic and educational environment
Social language practice: Write explanations to describe systems
of the human body on a diagram.

The digestive system

n order to convert the food we eat into fuel for our bodies,
Iwe have a digestive system. It is about 30 feet (9 meters)
of tube-like organs which start at the mouth and end at the
anus. While going through this twisted, coiled system, our
food is broken down, put into groups, and reprocessed
before being absorbed by the body to feed and replace
cells and provide our muscles with energy.
gooey (adj.):
pegajoso
Proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, and
minerals can only be extracted from your food
after it’s been turned into a mashed-up, gooey liquid by your
digestive system.The process starts in our mouth, where our
teeth chew and grind up each bite. The tongue then forms it
into a kind of ball called a bolus for swallowing.

Glands close to the mouth begin chemical digestion by
discharging specialized proteins called enzymesinto our
saliva, which enters our mouth. The body can’t absorb large
molecules of food, so enzymes break them down after being
discharged at various points along the digestive tract.

After swallowing, we can’t control digestion. Through the
throat, food passes to the esophagus, the first in a series
of hollow organs that use muscular contractions called
peristalsis to transport their contents.

Our food’s next stop is the stomach, a large, muscular
chamber that uses enzymes to break the food down.These
enzymes are composed of pepsin, which works on proteins,
and lipase, which targets fats. Tissues associated with the
stomach also produce hydrochloric acid, which helps

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