PROVE IT YOURSELF

Q: the digestion of the food you eat happens only in your stomach, true or false?

A: False, why?? (read below)

You can detect the presence of an enzyme (a catalytic protein) in one of your own body fluids, saliva, with the following demonstration. Place a small cracker in your mouth. Do not swallow it, but move around the cracker in your mouth to moisten it with saliva. After a minute you will experience a sweet taste that was not present initially. This is because your saliva contains an enzyme that break the bonds in the starch of the cracker, producing the sweet-tasting disaccharide maltose. Wha tyou have just demonstrated is that the hydrolysis (digestion) of starch actually begins in your mouth, even before food reaches your stomach. To prove that the starch was broken down by an enzyme and not by the watery component of your saliva, wet another cracker with tap water. Moisten it for the same lenght of time as the first cracker, and hten place it in your mouth. It should not taste as sweet as the first one.