What are the factors affecting digestion and absorption of food?
Answers
(1) Chewing. The more thoroughly food is chewed, the more its surface area is increased. To visualize this, just imagine a chunk of something being broken into two smaller pieces. The total surface area is now equal to that of the original chunk plus the new area exposed by breaking. Not only does prolonged chewing of food increase its surface area and hence its potential for quickly absorbing digestive juices, but chewing food longer also increases the production of saliva and the appropriate digestive enzymes by the stomach. In the words of Herbert Shelton, noted authority on “Natural Hygiene,” “Food should be chewed thoroughly because the stomach has no teeth.” (my first T.’ai-Chi Ch’uan teacher and a highly renowned doctor of internal Chinese medicine) said, “Once food is placed in the mouth, your only control of the digestive process is how well you chew. The rest is automatic.” Cheng also said, “The mouth gets us into more trouble than any other part of the body—both by what food we put into it and what words we let come out of it.”
Children naturally eat very slowly. Some parents ignorantly encourage children to eat faster. Most people do not chew food sufficiently. If you are observant, you will see that many hardly chew at all. When my father was 94 years of age, he had, in his words, “all of my natural teeth,” He would chew his food so thoroughly that people seeing him eat would watch in amazement.
As an experiment, when you are ready to swallow a bite of food, bring it to the front of your mouth again. Take note of the degree to which the food is incompletely chewed and how extra chewing increases the enjoyment of eating. Preparing the food for digestion prolongs the enjoyment of eating. With time, you will naturally chew your food until it is essentially liquid.
(2) Liquids. Liquids with or following meals dilute digestive enzymes, thus increasing digestion time. Lowering the intake of salt and spices reduces the desire for liquids during and after meals. Cold liquids are the worst because the digestive enzymes become very inefficient at lowered temperatures.
Some people purposely drink water around mealtime to fill their stomachs so they will eat less. This erroneous idea implies that hunger is satiated only when the stomach is full. As previously stated, true hunger has nothing to do with the stomach. Flooding ingested food with water may promote a sense of fullness and temporarily relieve the discomfort of irritated stomach walls contacting each other. However, this practice hampers digestion and stretches the stomach, thus further irritating the stomach lining.
(3) Condiments. Flavorings such as salt, vinegar, pepper, spices, and monosodium glutamate have effects beyond causing thirst after meals. One additional effect is that they prompt us to swallow food after insufficient chewing. Their strong flavors stimulate the sense of taste, giving the false impression that enough of the nutrients in the food have been extracted during the mastication process.
Many of these flavorings-especially MSG (monosodium glutamate)-act as gastric irritants, resulting in a false sensation of hunger, causing overeating.
(4) Frequency of Meals. If food is eaten before the previous meal has been sufficiently digested, one of two undesirable events occurs: (a) The stomach empties prematurely, releasing partly digested food into the intestines. This action results in the absorption of partly digested proteins and burdens the immune system, which must remove them from the blood stream. (b) The new, undigested food mixes with the partly digested food. The combined food mass now takes longer to digest, thus allowing increased putrefaction and fermentation of it.
(5) Eating Within Digestive Limitations.Overeating expands and stretches the stomach, causing irritation and exacerbating prior harm. Moreover, if excessive amounts of a specific nutrient such as protein are eaten, the glands of the stomach cannot secrete sufficient enzymes to fully digest it. The food then remains in the digestive tract longer, and yeast and bacteria have more time to multiply. Not only is it important not to overeat a specific nutrient, but it is important never to totally fill your stomach. You must leave room for the subsequent outpouring of juices required for digestion.
(6) Food Combinations. Combining foods for optimal digestion is a very important topic, covered in another article.
Answer:
The digestion process also concerns creating waste to be eliminated.
Explanation:
Digestion exists in the complex process of turning the food you eat into nutrients, which the body utilizes for energy, growth, and cell repair required to survive. The digestion process also concerns creating waste to be eliminated.
The process of absorption indicates that a substance captures and transforms energy. The absorbent spreads the material it captures throughout the whole and the adsorbent only circulates it through the surface. The method of gas or liquid that penetrate the body of an adsorbent is commonly known as absorption.
factors affecting digestion
The quantity of feed consumed can influence digestibility depending on whether large quantities are consumed, or fewer portions over the day. When the animal eats often and in large quantities, digestion exists affected due to the retention of food in the digestive parcel over shorter periods.
Reduced food quality
Unfortunately, our food quality has decreased over the past 50 years. For example, modern wheat has been modified to evolve into a grain that is resistant to different bacteria and viruses. It is sprayed far too many times while it’s growing and after harvesting, more fountains are used to preserve it.