Unit 8A

Food and Digestion

Name: ……………………………..

Year 8: …………

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Unit 8 A: Food and Digestion
___________________________________________________________
All the different foods you eat are a mixture of just seven food types. Your body needs these nutrients as raw
materials for:
• Growth- you need nutrient molecules so your body can get bigger
• Repair- to repair damaged tissues when you hurt yourself
• Movement- food provides stored energy, which is released by every cell during respiration. This released
energy allows the body to move.

A balanced diet:

A balanced diet contains the different nutrients in the correct amounts to keep us healthy.
There are seven different food groups:
•Proteins •Carbohydrates
•Fats •Minerals
•Vitamins •Fibre
•Water

Food group Use in the body Good sources

Carbohydrates To provide energy Cereals, bread, pasta and potatoes

Protein For growth and repair Fish, meat, eggs and dairy
products
Fat To provide energy. Also to store energy in Butter, oil and nuts
the body and insulate it against cold
minerals Needed in small amounts to maintain health Salt, milk (for calcium) and liver
(for iron)
Vitamins Needed in small amounts to maintain health Dairy foods, fruit, vegetables

Fibre To provide roughage to help to keep the Vegetables, bran

food moving through the gut
Water Needed for cells and body fluids Fruit juice, milk, water

Some effects of a poor diet:

There are several vitamins and minerals, found in different foods. The table shows a few of them. You only
need to eat a bit of each one, but if you don’t, you are in trouble.

Vitamin Found in Used for

A Liver, butter, green vegetables Healthy eyes and skin- helps you see in the dark
B2 Cheese, milk, liver, eggs, green vegetables Healthy skin
C Citrus fruits, green vegetables, potatoes Healthy gums and skin
D Fish liver oil, eggs, sunlight on the skin Healthy bones

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Mineral Found in Used for
Iron Liver, red meat, eggs Healthy blood
Calcium Milk, cheese, fish Healthy bones and teeth

If you have too little of a particular nutrient, we say that you have a deficiency in that nutrient. For example
people who have a fibre deficiency in their diet may get constipation.

Vitamin and mineral deficiencies

Defficiency Effect Description

Iron Anaemia a decrease in normal number of red blood cells, less than the normal quantity
of hemoglobin in the blood
Iodine Goitre A swelling in the thyroid gland
Vitamin A Blindness Lack of visual perception
Vitamin C Scurvy formation of spots on the skin, spongy gums, and bleeding from the mucous
membranes
Vitamin D Rickets Soft bones leading to fractures and deformity.

Too thin, too fat:

Food is a store of chemical energy. If you look on the side of food packets you will see the food's energy
content. This is usually measured in kilojoules, kJ. If we eat too little food, we will use up our store of fat and
become too thin. If we eat too much food, especially foods rich in sugar and fat, we will increase our store of fat
and become too fat.
It is important to balance the amount of food we eat with who we are and what we do. The amount of energy we
need from our food depends on our age, our height and how much exercise we get.

For example, a one-year old baby needs 3850 kJ each day to continue to grow, whereas an adult Olympic
swimmer in training needs 15,600 kJ each day. Someone who sits at a desk all day will need less food than their
twin who climbs ladders all day to wash windows.

How do we know which nutrients are in a food?

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What happens to food inside the digestive system?

Enzyme action:

Our teeth break food down into small pieces when we chew. This is only a start to the process of digestion, as
chewed pieces of food are still too large to be absorbed by the body. Food has to be broken down chemically
into really small particles before it can be absorbed. Enzymes are needed so that this break-down happens
quickly enough to be useful.
Take care - enzymes are not living things. They are just special proteins that can break large molecules into
small molecules. Different types of enzymes can break down different nutrients:

• carbohydrase or amylase enzymes break down starch into sugar

• protease enzymes break down proteins into amino acids
• lipase enzymes break down fats into fatty acids and glycerol.

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The different types of enzymes in the digestive system:

1. Carbohydrase enzymes:

Carbohydrates are digested in the mouth, stomach and small intestine. Carbohydrase enzymes break down
starch into sugars.
The saliva in your mouth contains amylase, which is another starch digesting enzyme. If you chew a piece of
bread for long enough, the starch it contains is digested to sugar, and it begins to taste sweet.

2. Protease enzumes:

Proteins are digested in the stomach and small intestine. Protease enzymes break down proteins into amino
acids. Digestion of proteins in the stomach is helped by stomach acid, which is strong hydrochloric acid. This
also kills harmful micro-organisms that may be in the food.

3. Lipase enzymes:

Lipase enzymes break down fat into fatty acids and glycerol. Digestion of fat in the small intestine is helped by
bile, made in the liver. Bile breaks the fat into small droplets that are easier for the lipase enzymes to work on.

Factors affecting an enzyme’s action:

The activity of enzymes is strongly affected by changes in pH and temperature. Each enzyme works best at a
certain pH and temperature, its activity decreasing at values above and below that point.

Temperature:

There is a certain temperature at which an enzyme's catalytic activity is at its greatest (see graph). This optimal
temperature is usually around human body temperature (37.5 oC) for the enzymes in human cells.
Enzymes are usually denatured above about 45ºC.
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PH:

Each enzyme works within quite a small pH range. There is a pH at which its activity is greatest (the optimal
pH). This is because changes in pH can change the shape of the enzyme and, therefore, its effectiveness.

Examples:

• The protease pepsin works best at a pH of 1–2 (found in the stomach) while
• The protease trypsin is inactive at such a low pH but very active at a pH of 8 (found in the small
intestine as the bicarbonate of the pancreatic fluid neutralizes the arriving stomach contents).

The enzymes of the digestive system:

Different parts of the gut produce different enzymes.

enzyme where produced

amylase salivary glands, pancreas, small intestine

protease stomach, pancreas, small intestine

lipase pancreas, small intestine

The different food groups will be digested as follow:

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Things that are not digested

Minerals, vitamins and water are already small enough to be absorbed by the body without being broken
down, so they are not digested.
Digestive enzymes cannot break down fibre, which is why it cannot be absorbed by the body.

Conclusion:

These are the processes that happen in the digestive system:

ingestion (eating) → digestion (breaking down) → absorption → egestion

We've already looked at how foods are broken down by enzymes in digestion. Now we will look at how the
products of digestion are absorbed into the body.

Absorption:

Digested food molecules are absorbed in the small intestine. This means that they pass through the wall of the
small intestine and into our bloodstream. Once in the bloodstream, the digested food molecules are carried
around the body to where they are needed.
Only small, soluble substances can pass across the wall of the small intestine. Large insoluble substances cannot
pass through. Study the slideshow to check your understanding of this.

Absorption into bloodstream

The inside wall of the small intestine needs to be thin, with a really big surface area. This allows absorption to
happen quickly and efficiently. If the small intestine had a thick wall and a small surface area, a lot of digested
food might pass out of the body before it had a chance to be absorbed.
To get a big surface area, the inside wall of the small intestine is lined with tiny villi (one of them is called a
villus). These stick out and give a big surface area. They also contain blood capillaries to carry away the
absorbed food molecules.

Egestion:
Excess water is absorbed back into the body in the large intestine. What is left then is undigested food. This is
stored in the rectum, the lower part of the large intestine, until we are ready to go to the toilet. It then comes out
of the rectum through the anus as faeces. This process is called egestion.
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Q1:
Look at the label from a bar of milk chocolate.

Nutrition information
Per bar: Energy 1085kJ/260kcal, Protein 3,8g, Carbohydrates 28,0g, Fat 14,7g
Per 100g: Energy 2210kJ/530kcal, Protein 7,8g, Carbohydrates 57,1g, Fat 29,9g

a) How many kJ of energy does this 49g bar give us? ________________________
b) Which food groups in the chocolate give us energy? ________________________
c) Why do our bodies need energy? _____________________________________________________________
d) How many kcal of energy does an amount of 200g give us? _______________________________________
e) Given that 1kcal= 4,18kJ, Convert 2000J into cal.________________________________________________

Q 2:
The table shows the amount of energy used by top athletes for different races.

Race Speed Total energy used

(km/h) (kJ)
100m 37 200
800m 27 520
1500m 25 720
10 000m 21,5 3000
42 186m (marathon) 20 14 000

a) Which event uses the most energy? Explain why this is.
__________________________________________________________________________________________

b) Long distance runners need large stores of carbohydrate in their liver and muscles. Why is this?
__________________________________________________________________________________________
c) Find out what foods marathon runners eat the night before a race to top up the carbohydrate stores in their
muscles.
_________________________________________________________________________________________

Q 3:
Complete the following tables:

Food group Main use

Carbohydrates and fats
Most of the body is made of this
Fibre
Used for growth
Used for making bones and teeth

If you are short of …. You can get …

Kwashiorkor
_________________ as a young child
Vitamin C
_________________________

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Q 4:
Fill in the blank.

We get our energy from fats and ___________________________ .

We use proteins to make cells for _______________________ and repairing the body.
It is easier for materials to pass through the digestive system if there is ____________________ in our food.
We also need water, vitamins and ________________________ to be healthy.

Q 5:
Answer the following.

a) To balance your diet over a day, you need to eat foods from all these groups:
•____________________________ •____________________________
•____________________________ •____________________________
•____________________________ •____________________________
•____________________________

b) The amount of each of these food groups that you need depends on:
•_________________________________________________________________________________________
•_________________________________________________________________________________________
•_________________________________________________________________________________________
•_________________________________________________________________________________________

c) Look at the graph on page 6 and complete the following.

The food that contains the most protein is ______________________.
The food that contains the most water is ______________________.
The food that contains the least protein is ______________________.
There is no carbohydrate in ______________________ or ______________________.

Q 6:
Fill in the following table:

Food group Type of food it is found in How it is used in the body

Protein
Carbohydrate
Fat
Vitamins
Minerals
Water

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Q 7:
There are some very peculiar stories about how we discovered the things we know about food. Read this article
about some of these stories and then answer the questions.

Like many scientific ideas, our knowledge about food started with ancient people.
Writing on a piece of papyrus (ancient Egyptian paper) from around 1 500 BC shows us that
doctors knew that diet affected health.

Many discoveries about food were made in the 18th century. In 1753 James Lind found the
cure for scurvy by doing an interesting experiment. He chose twelve sailors with scurvy and
he fed them on mutton broth (a soup), biscuits and gruel (oatmeal boiled in water or milk).
The sailors were split up into six pairs and each pair received one of the following additional
foods: cider, vinegar, dilute sulphuric acid, seawater, garlic and mustard paste, or oranges
and lemons. Only the two sailors eating oranges and lemons recovered, and so a cure for
scurvy was discovered. Lind had, in fact, rediscovered what Canadian Indians had known for a
long time.

Between 1906 and 1912 Professor Gowland Hopkins studied the effect of diet on animals. In
one of his experiments, he was able to show that rats that were given milk in their diet grew
bigger and healthier than those fed on pure carbohydrates, fats and proteins. We now know
that milk contains essential nutrients. One of these is vitamin D which we need for healthy
bones and teeth.

1) What have doctors known about diet since ancient times?

__________________________________________________________________________________________

2) Write down two symptoms of scurvy.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

3) Draw a flow diagram to explain how Lind discovered a cure of scurvy.

4) What causes scurvy?

__________________________________________________________________________________________
5) As well as milk, Professor Hopkins fed his rats on pure starch, sugar, lard, milk protein, mineral salts and
water.
What exactly do you think he did? Remember that he needed to make his experiment a fair test.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________

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Q 8:
Fill in the following table

Vitamins Uses Good sources

A Needed for healthy bones, teeth, skin, eyes and
Retinol nervous, respiratory and digestive systems.

B1 Helps release energy from food. Heart and

Thiamine nervous system benefited.

B2 Promotes healthy skin and helps body cells use

Riboflavin oxygen.

B3 Essential for cell metabolism and use of

Niacin carbohydrates.

B6 Needed for protein, fat and carbohydrate

Pyridoxine metabolism

B5 Helps convert proteins, fats and carbohydrates

Pantothenic acid into energy.

B12 Needed for development of red blood cells and

Cobalamins function of nervous system.

B7 Helps from fatty acids and maintains healthy

Biotin skin.

B9 Helps produce red blood cells.

Folate

C Needed for sound teeth and bones. Helps the

Ascorbic acid healing process.

D Needed for calcium and phosphorus

Cholecalciferol metabolism.

E Helps restore cell membranes and other body

Tocopherol structures.

K Essential for normal body clotting.

Phylloquinone

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Q 9:
The small intestine is a very important part of the digestive system.
At about 6 metres long, it is the longest part. There are folds in the wall of the small intestine, as well as small
projections called villi. Villi are about 1 mm long. The total surface area of the small intestine is about 300
square metres- more than the area of four tennis courts! Digested food must cross the surface cells lining the
villi. From here the digested food goes into the bloodstream.

1) What is the advantage of the small intestine being so long and having villi?
__________________________________________________________________________________________

2) The villi have many blood capillaries inside them.

Why are the capillaries important?
__________________________________________________________________________________________

3) What do we call the breaking down of food? _____________________________

4) What do we call the movement of nutrients across the surface cells of the villi into the blood?
__________________________________________________________________________________________
5) A cow’s small intestine is about 50 metres long.
Explain why it is so much longer than that of humans.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________

Q 10:
a) Label the following diagram with the different parts of the digestive system.

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b) Put the names of the different parts of the gut in the correct order.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________

Q 11:

a) Which of the five nutrients can’t be digested?

__________________________________________________________________________________________

b) What do we mean when we say that something is absorbed?

__________________________________________________________________________________________

c) Give a list of foods that are rich in fibre.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

What happens to fibre during digestion?

__________________________________________________________________________________________

d) Name an enzyme that helps break down:

Carbohydrates: __________________________ Proteins: ____________________________
Fats: __________________________________

Q 12:
Fill in the blank.

Small molecules of digested food are ____________________ through the wall of the __________________.
They pass into the ________________. They can then be used in chemical reactions.
Food that is not digested leaves the body as ___________________.

__________________ speed up the digestion of food in the body. They turn large ________________ nutrient
molecules of proteins, carbohydrates and fats into small _________________ molecules so that the body can
________________ them.

Q 13:
Match up the different jobs described below with the correct part of the body.

The acid bath! Digestive juices and acid added. Food is churned. ____________________________
A straight muscular tube. ____________________
Fibre and food that can’t be digested are removed through the anus. Water is taken back here. ______________
Food chewed and mixed with saliva, then swallowed. _________________________
More juices added from liver and pancreas to finish digestion. Food then passes into the blood. _____________

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Q 14:

1. The food substances that our body uses are called ______________________________
2. Chemicals which are used for making new cells are _____________________________

3. Write down two foods which provide proteins: a) _______________________________

b) _______________________________

4. State two reasons why we need to eat: a) ______________________________________

b) ______________________________________

5. Give one reason why the following are needed in our diet:
a) Fiber: __________________________________________________________________________________
b) Water: _________________________________________________________________________________

6. In human body the mineral calcium is needed for __________________________________ and the vitamin
E is needed for ____________________________________________________.

7. Name three foods needed for:

a) Strong bones and teeth: ____________________________________________________________________
b) To avoid scurvy: _________________________________________________________________________
c) To avoid constipation: _____________________________________________________________________
d) Good supply of energy: ____________________________________________________________________

8. What happens if you eat more than you need? __________________________________________________

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