Mastication simply means chewing or grinding up food with your teeth, something you do every day. When you take a bite of food, it gets positioned between your teeth by the cheek and tongue. The purpose of chewing your food, in addition to making sure you don't choke, is to increase the surface area of your food so that your salivary enzymes can start to break it down.
chewing is actually the first step of digestion. For example, as you chew on a cracker, it will gradually become softer, mushier, and warmer as your saliva begins to break down the carbohydrates. Once you swallow this new blob of food, called a bolus, it enters your esophagus and heads towards the stomach. Chewing is a critical step of digestion, but is often overlooked when reviewing the process.
in cases where a human or animal cannot chew for themselves, a process called premastication may take place. In this situatio
Answers
Chewing or mastication is the process by which food is crushed and ground by teeth. It is the first step of digestion, and it increases the surface area of foods to allow a more efficient break down by enzymes. During the mastication process, the food is positioned by the cheek and tongue between the teeth for grinding. The muscles of mastication move the jaws to bring the teeth into intermittent contact, repeatedly occluding and opening. As chewing continues, the food is made softer and warmer, and the enzymes in saliva begin to break down carbohydrates in the food. After chewing, the food (now called a bolus) is swallowed. It enters the esophagus and via peristalsis continues on to the stomach, where the next step of digestion occurs.[1]
Premastication is sometimes performed by human parents for infants who are unable to do so for themselves. The food is masticated in the mouth of the parent into a bolus and then transferred to the infant for consumption.[2] (Some other animals also premasticate.)
Cattle and some other animals, called ruminants, chew food more than once to extract more nutrients. After the first round of chewing, this food is called cud.