Читать книгу Nutrition For Dummies - Carol Ann Rinzler - Страница 33

Lift your fork to your mouth, and your teeth and salivary glands swing into action. Your teeth chew, grinding and breaking food into small, manageable pieces. As a result,

 You can swallow easily.

 You break down the indigestible wrapper of fibers surrounding the edible parts of some foods (fruits, vegetables, whole grains) so that your digestive enzymes can get to the nutrients inside.

At the same time, salivary glands under your tongue and in the back of your mouth secrete the watery liquid called saliva, which performs two important functions:

 It moistens and compacts food so your tongue can push it to the back of your mouth and you can swallow, sending the food down your esophagus into your stomach.

 It provides amylases, enzymes that start the digestion of complex carbohydrates (starches), breaking the starch molecules into simple sugars. (Check out Chapter 8 for more on carbs.)

No protein digestion occurs in your mouth, and although saliva does contain very small amounts of lingual lipases — fat-busting enzymes secreted by cells at the base of the tongue — the amount is so small that the fat digestion here is insignificant.