Digestive System Functions Quiz

❑Ingestion. Food must be placed into the mouth before it can be acted on; this is an active, voluntary process called ingestion. ❑Propulsion. If foods are to be processed by more than one digestive organ, they must be propelled from one organ to the next; swallowing is one example of food movement that depends largely on the propulsive process called peristalsis (involuntary, alternating waves of contraction and relaxation of the muscles in the organ wall). ❑Food breakdown: mechanical digestion. Mechanical digestion prepares food for further degradation by enzymes by physically fragmenting the foods into smaller pieces, and examples of mechanical digestion are: mixing of food in the mouth by the tongue, churning of food in the stomach, and segmentation in the small intestine. FUNCTIONS ❑Food breakdown: chemical digestion. The sequence of steps in which the large food molecules are broken down into the.