Chapter 3

DIGESTION OF FOOD IN THE MOUTH

=11. Food of the cells.=--All the cells of the body work and wear out. They must eat and keep growing. The food of the cells is the blood. Water, albumin, fat, sugar, and minerals are in the blood. The cells eat these things and grow. All food must be one or more of these five things. Before they reach the blood, they must all be changed to a liquid. A few cells of the body are set aside to do this work of changing them. Changing food into blood is digestion.

=12. Cooking.=--Cooking begins digestion. It softens and dissolves food. It makes food taste better. Most food is unfit for use until it is cooked. Poor cooking often makes food still worse for use. Food should always be soft and taste good after cooking. Softening food by cooking saves the mouth and stomach a great deal of work. The good taste of the food makes it pleasant for them to digest it. We must cut our food into small pieces before we eat it. If we eat only a small piece at a time we shall not eat too fast. If we cut our food fine we can find any bones and other hard things, and can keep them from getting inside the body.

=13. Chewing.=--Digestion goes on in the mouth. The mouth does three things to food. _First_, it mixes and grinds it between the teeth.

_Second_, it pours water over the food through fine tubes. The water of the mouth is called the saliva. The saliva makes the food a thin paste.

_Third_, the saliva changes some of the starch to sugar. Starch must be all changed to sugar before it can feed the cells.

=14. Too fast eating.=--Some boys fill their mouths with food. Then they cannot chew their food and cannot mix saliva with it. They swallow their food whole, and then their stomachs have to grind it. The saliva cannot mix with the food and so it is too dry in the stomach. Then their stomachs ache, and they are sick. Eating too fast and too much makes children sick oftener than anything else.

Birds swallow their food whole, for they have no teeth. Instead, a strong gizzard inside grinds the food. We have no gizzards, and so we must grind our food with our teeth.

=15. Teeth.=--We have two kinds of teeth. The front teeth are sharp and cut the food; the back teeth are flat and rough and grind it. If you bite nuts or other hard things you may break off a little piece of a tooth. Then the tooth may decay and ache.

After you eat, some food will sometimes stick to the teeth. Then it may decay and make your breath smell bad. After each meal always pick the teeth with a wooden toothpick. Your teeth will also get dirty and become stained unless you clean them. Always brush your teeth with water every morning. This will also keep them from decaying.

=16. Swallowing.=--When food has been chewed and mixed with saliva until it is a paste, it is ready to be swallowed. The tongue pushes the food into a bag just back of the mouth. We call the bag the _pharynx_. Then the pharynx squeezes it down a long tube and into the stomach. The nose and windpipe also open into this bag, but both are closed by little doors while we swallow. We cannot breathe while we swallow. If the doors are not shut tightly, some food gets into the windpipe and chokes us.

WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED

1. We eat to feed the cells of the body.

2. All food must be made into blood.

3. Changing food to blood is digestion.

4. Cooking softens food and makes it taste good.

5. Food is ground fine in the mouth, and mixed with saliva to form a paste. Some of its starch is changed to sugar.

6. If food is only half chewed the stomach has to grind it.

7. When we swallow, the tongue pushes the food into a bag back of the mouth and the bag squeezes it down a long tube to the stomach.