Welcome to Annieâs Chamorro Kitchen! My name is Annie ~ food and I get along so well! Cooking and baking is more than a hobby for me ~ it's a passion. I come from the beautiful island of Guam, U.S.A., which is located in the beautiful southwest Pacific.
The digestion of different types of foods occurs in different areas of the digestive tract. Digestion of starch begins in the mouth with the chewing of food (mastication) and the production of amylases immediately breaking down certain starches.
This chewing reduces the size of the food particles and mixes them with saliva for easier swallowing. Before your food passes from the mouth and down your esophagus, salivary amylase, an enzyme in saliva, begins to digest the starch in your bread. That is the start of chemical digestion. The mass of chewed sandwich is called a bolus. You voluntarily swallow it, but the rest of the digestion-absorption process is involuntary. The passage of the bolus through the esophagus to the stomach occurs by peristalsis, a series of wave-like muscle contractions.