--- title: Digestion: the journey of a sandwich — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Digestion: the journey of a sandwich», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: A cheese sandwich at lunch goes on a long journey, and by the end your body has broken it into pieces so tiny that they pass into you --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/67-digestion-the-journey-of-a-sandwich/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/) / Digestion: the journey of a sandwich # Digestion: the journey of a sandwich Lesson 67 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 18 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/biology/67-digestion-the-journey-of-a-sandwich/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/67-digestion-the-journey-of-a-sandwich/0/) — A cheese sandwich at lunch goes on a long journey, and by the end your body has broken it into pieces so tiny that they pass into your blood. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/67-digestion-the-journey-of-a-sandwich/1/) — It starts in the mouth: teeth cut and grind, and saliva wets the food and already begins turning the starch of the bread into sugar, which is why bread chewed for a long time tastes sweeter. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/67-digestion-the-journey-of-a-sandwich/2/) — When you swallow, muscles in the food pipe squeeze it down in waves, like toothpaste pushed along a tube, so it would reach your stomach even if you stood on your head. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/67-digestion-the-journey-of-a-sandwich/3/) — The stomach churns it in strong acid, the long folded small intestine soaks up the goodness, and the large intestine takes back the water before what is left leaves the body. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/67-digestion-the-journey-of-a-sandwich/4/) — Along the way the liver works as the body's chemical factory, fibre from apple peel keeps things moving, and fizzy drinks come back up as burps. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/67-digestion-the-journey-of-a-sandwich/5/) — Teeth cut and grind food into small pieces, which are easier to swallow and quicker to digest, and saliva wets it and starts breaking the starch in bread into sugar. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/67-digestion-the-journey-of-a-sandwich/6/) — Smelling or even thinking about tasty food makes glands in the mouth release saliva, and we make roughly 1 litre of saliva a day. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/67-digestion-the-journey-of-a-sandwich/7/) — Food is pushed down the food pipe, the oesophagus, by waves of muscle squeezing, so swallowing works even upside down, and astronauts can swallow in space. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/67-digestion-the-journey-of-a-sandwich/8/) — When you swallow, a flap called the epiglottis covers the windpipe; if you laugh or talk while swallowing, some drink can slip into the windpipe and you cough it out. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/67-digestion-the-journey-of-a-sandwich/9/) — The stomach churns food with strong hydrochloric acid and enzymes that break down proteins, and the acid kills many germs; a layer of mucus stops it digesting itself. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/67-digestion-the-journey-of-a-sandwich/11/) — The small intestine is about 6 to 7 metres long in an adult, folded up in the tummy, and most digestion and absorption of food into the blood happens there. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/67-digestion-the-journey-of-a-sandwich/12/) — The inside of the small intestine is covered in millions of tiny finger-like folds called villi, which give it a huge surface for soaking up food. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/67-digestion-the-journey-of-a-sandwich/13/) — The large intestine soaks up water and salts from what is left, and its bacteria break down some of the fibre. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/67-digestion-the-journey-of-a-sandwich/14/) — Fibre from fruit, vegetables and whole grains is not digested by us but helps food move along the gut and feeds the good gut bacteria. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/67-digestion-the-journey-of-a-sandwich/15/) — Fizzy drinks are full of carbon dioxide gas, which collects in the stomach and comes back up as a burp. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/67-digestion-the-journey-of-a-sandwich/16/) — The liver is the largest organ inside the body; it processes food from the gut, stores energy and vitamins, makes bile to help digest fat and cleans harmful substances from the blood. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/67-digestion-the-journey-of-a-sandwich/17/) — The whole journey of a meal through the gut usually takes about one to three days. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/67-digestion-the-journey-of-a-sandwich/18/) — Swallowed chewing gum is not digested, but it does not stay inside for 7 years: it passes through and leaves the body in a few days, like other things we cannot digest. - ← previous: [Lungs and breathing](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/66-lungs-and-breathing/) - next →: [The brain and nerves](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/68-the-brain-and-nerves/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)