Inside your body, you have intestines that wind their way around the organs in your abdomen. They are called the Duodenum, the Small intestine, the Large intestine and the Rectum. Altogether, your intestines are almost nine meters long. Intestines look like long tunnels that food must pass through so that the body can absorb the nourishment in it. When the food has reached journey's end in your intestines, all that is left is a smeary mass that leaves your body in the form of - poop!
1. Gullet 2. Liver
3. Stomach 4. Gallbladder 5. Small intestine 6. Large intestine 7. Rectum
The processing of the food itself, the digestion, begins in the stomach and continues during the food's trip through your intestines. Immediately after the stomach we find the Duodenum.
This is where the food is mixed with bile from the gall bladder and the liver, as well as with pancreatic juice from the pancreas. The bile and the pancreatic juice digest the food and make it easier for the body to absorb the nourishment.
The intestines squeeze and knead the food so that all the nourishment is pressed out.
On the walls of the small intestine we find what are referred to as intestinal villi, which look like small hairs but are actually thin blood vessels. These blood vessels absorb most of the nourishment in the food and the blood transports this nourishment to the rest of your body.
When the food has been squeezed through the small intestine for a while, you can no longer see that it once maybe was carrots, potatoes or meat. Instead, it looks like batter.
When this batter finally reaches the large intestine, there is not much nourishment left in it. The large intestine is two metres long and its purpose is to absorb as much liquid as possible from this batter.
When this task has been accomplished, the batter has become firmer and turned into feces – poop.
The last stop on the way through the intestines is the rectum. Now is the time to squeeze the food that last step, before it leaves the body completely and is flushed away in the toilet.