We talked about how to choose what to type of food to put in your mouth. When it comes to healthy eating, digestion is the most important road trip of your life.

Back at it! Let's talk about what happens to food when you eat it. When you eat food, your body breaks it down or "digests" it. Think of digestion as an efficient road trip for food. You have your highways and your pit stops along the way.

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Check out this TedEd video explaining what your body does to digest your food:

When you put a piece of food in your mouth, how hard do you think about what happens next? If you want to make informed decisions about what you put into your body, it’s really important to understand how your body ultimately uses what you put into it. Then, you can work in reverse to figure out what foods will give your body those pieces it needs.

“Digestion” is the process your body has for breaking down your food and drink into smaller parts that you can use.

We tend to focus on the fact that digestion involves breaking food down and forget the fact that digestion is a *process*. In fact, the first definition of “digest” in Webster’s Dictionary is “to distribute or arrange systematically”. A key part of the healthy eating equation is that the process of digestion isn’t random. Which is great news! When there’s a system, we can figure out how to make it work to our benefit. Watch the video above to walk through the digestive process.

Tomorrow, we’ll tackle nutrients.