New American Chemical Society video on the chemistry behind digestion

Go ahead. Call digestion a disassembly line. The body takes that carrot, burger, tofu — whatever morsel of food makes a journey once whimsically described as "through the lips, past the gums, lookout stomach, here it comes!" Digestion breaks the food down, extracts nutrients, and discards the waste. This amazing example of chemistry in action is the focus of a new episode of the ChemMatters video series, available at BytesizeScience.com.

The video is based on an article in the latest issue of ChemMatters, ACS' quarterly magazine for high school students, and was produced by the team behind ACS' award-winning Bytesize Science videos.

This episode explains that our body relies on three major types of food: carbohydrates, fats and proteins. The video highlights how the body breaks down these big three food groups and puts their nutrients to use. Even though all the chemical reactions involved in digestion are different, they are variations of the same type of reaction — hydrolysis.

Provided by American Chemical Society