Bread is great for quick energy.

But before the food you eat can make you a stronger, faster, healthier person, your body has to get the nutrients from the food so the nutrients can do their jobs. That is, your body has to get the calcium from the milk, the beta-carotine from the carrots and the carbohydrates from the bread, so the calcium can strengthen the bones, the beta-carotine can support the eyes and the carbohydrates can give you energy.

It's a long way from a juicy orange to vitamin C - a path that involves a sack about the size of your fist called the stomach and 20 to 28 feet of curving tubes called the small and large intestines.

Step 1

You eat a peanut butter and banana sandwich with the crusts removed, four carrots and three celery sticks and wash it down with orange juice.

Your mouth is the first step in the digestion adventure - the place where the food is ground and crushed and mushed and smooshed by your teeth. That mushing and smooshing is preparing the food for easier digestion. Saliva - you may know it as spit -also is helping to prepare the food for later stops.

Step 2

When you swallow, the food (now mush) travels down the "food pipe," called the esophagus.

Step 3

The food enters your stomach, which is only the size of your fist. When the mush gets to the stomach, it meets up with a lot of acid and enzymes, kept in your stomach just to turn the mush into liquid.

Step 4

The liquefied mush moves into the small intestine, where the liver provides the necessary stuff (bile salts) to help the small intestine absorb fat out of the liquefied mush. The pancreas joins in by giving the small intestine plenty of digestive enzymes so fats, proteins and carbohydrates are all broken down so your body can absorb them. The small intestine finishes by absorbing as many nutrients as it can (in this case, the vitamin C from your juice, the potassium from your bananas in your sandwich and other vitamins and minerals).

Step 5

The large intestine, which actually is much shorter than the small intestine, gives the mush one last chance to provide the body with what it needs - in this case, water. This also is where feces are formed.

Step 6

What wasn't absorbed by the body is flushed away in the toilet.

Going down the wrong way

Sometimes, after the mouth turns food to mush, the mush goes down the wrong pipe - meaning, the mush is in the airway instead of the esophagus.

Normally, the body makes sure this doesn't happen. When you swallow, a small trap door closes over the breathing tube so food can safely travel down the esophagus. When food slips into the airway, you start coughing so the airway is cleared and breathing can go back to normal.