The journey of a bite of apple
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What you will learn
By the end, you can order the parts of the digestive system and explain what the heart and blood do.
Yuki bites into a crunchy apple at breakfast. By lunchtime it is gone, but it did not vanish. Her body took it apart, soaked up the useful bits and sent them off in her blood. Where did it go?
Read the explanation
Digestion breaks food into pieces small enough to pass into the blood. Teeth and saliva start in the mouth. The food pipe squeezes food to the stomach, which churns it into a soup. The small intestine takes nutrients into the blood; the large intestine takes back water; the rest leaves the body.
- The heart is a muscle that pumps blood around the body.
- Blood carries oxygen and nutrients everywhere and carries waste away.
- Arteries carry blood away from the heart; veins bring it back.