Digestion Of A Ham Sandwich example essay topic

As I look at the ham sandwich sitting on the plate before me, I start to feel queasy with disgust. The slab of ham is laced with fat. The white solid stuff is just sitting there, taunting me. Daring me to eat it. The bread is stale, crumbling, falling apart. I know that as soon as I pick up the sandwich, the bread is going to disintegrate in my fingers, leaving me with nothing but the malicious ham.

No, I think to myself. I will not eat this sandwich. I just cannot bring myself to put this, this thing into my mouth. I know that if I make myself, I will only get it into my stomach, and then it would come right back up.

I stand up and walk over to my kitchen sink. I open the cupboard door that is beneath, and I dump my sandwich into the garbage can. Now, I think to myself, what to do about lunch. I walk over to the refrigerator and open the door.

My eyes start scanning the shelves. H, no... no... yes! I will make myself a turkey sandwich. I like turkey. I like turkey a lot.

I take the turkey and set it on the counter. Then I grab the Buttermilk White bread, freshly made by my mom. She's like Martha Stewart, you know. She grows the wheat herself.

She uses some kind of mill we have in the back yard to grind it into flour. We have a cow. She milked it herself. Then she made the buttermilk to put into the bread.

Anyway, that's off the subject. I take out two slices of bread and put them onto a wooden cutting board. I put a few thin slices of turkey onto one piece of bread. I then take the other piece and gently nestle it on top of the turkey. I put the sandwich onto a paper plate and take it to the table. I look at it and think to myself, job well done.

But I can't help thinking that I'm missing something. Oh yes! Miracle Whip. I quickly jump up and run over to the refrigerator. You see, I'm very hungry by this time.

I grab the jar of Miracle Whip. I run over to our silverware drawer and grab a butter knife. Taking the two things over to the table, I sit down. I delicately remove the top slice of bread, and apply a thin layer of Miracle Whip. Then I put the top slice of bread on the turkey. I pick up the sandwich and am just about to take a bite.

Then I remember. I'm supposed to be eating a ham sandwich for this essay. Well, considering I don't like ham, I won't eat it. But... this essay is supposed to be about a ham sandwich. So, we " ll call this turkey sandwich a 'ham's andwich.

I take a bite of my 'ham's andwich. My incisors slice into the bread, Miracle Whip, and 'ham. ' My lips help tear the piece off of the sandwich. They seal over my teeth, making sure not one single molecule drops out of my mouth. My canines tear and rip at the 'ham's andwich, while my molars grind it into smaller pieces. My tongue shoves the smaller fragments to the roof of my mouth, my hard palate, forcing them to become smaller yet.

My teeth and tongue are wonderful for physical digestion, I think to myself. But mastication is such an ugly word. I will not call this part of my digestion mastication. Oh, no. I shall call it chewing. That is a much lovelier word.

All of a sudden, I can feel my saliva at work. The salivary amylase coming from my salivary glands starts to chemically rip at the starches in my 'ham's andwich. The bread starts to break down even more. Some of the starches go from being double sugars like maltose to simple sugars like glucose or g lactose.

My tongue mixes everything up, so it is saturated with the saliva and mucus that is coming from my salivary glands. The mucus is coating and lubricating my 'ham's andwich, preparing it to be swallowed. Abruptly, I start to swallow. My soft palate starts to move, aiding my swallowing. The lump that was formerly part of my 'ham's andwich passes through the pharynx and glottis in my mouth.

It passes the epiglottis which covers my nasopharynx, so the 'ham' doesn't go up my nose. I've had part of the skin of an apple go up there before. It hurts. Believe me. So I must say, I'm extremely happy to have an epiglottis. The 'ham's andwich passes into my esophagus.

I can feel each smooth muscle cell in my esophagus contracting in a wave-like motion... The motion is called peristalsis. I can feel the lump of food move down all ten or twelve inches of my esophagus. With one final contraction of the smooth muscles, the bolus of food is shoved past the cardiac sphincter. That controls the top of the stomach, letting things in and out (also known as vomiting). I think I have a rather strong cardiac sphincter.

I never vomit. The bolus starts being churned in my pint sized, j shaped stomach. The three layers of muscle contract, beating the 'ham's andwich. The glands and gastric pits emit gastric juices. The bolus of 'ham' bounces all over my stomach, but will not go up into the fundus of my stomach. It is up in the right hand corner of my stomach.

That will stay empty. The gastric juices start tearing apart the proteins in my 'ham. ' The pepsin takes the polypeptides, and they are slowly broken into peptides. Those are slowly broken down into dipeptide's.

Some are even broken down further into amino acids and absorbed into my blood. The hydrochloric acid and mucus starts working at the rest of the food, too. The gastric juices also start chemically tearing at the starches and fats, but don't do a very good job. They just have to wait until they enter the intestines.

After a while, the 'ham's andwich is turned into a semi-solid mixture called chyme. I can feel the chyme sloshing around in my stomach, waiting for the pyloric sphincter to open and release it into my small intestine. Then, without warning, the pyloric sphincter opens and sends the chyme in my stomach rushing into my small intestines. There, what remains of the protein is savagely attacked by trypsin.

Some undigested proteins are ripped from their polypeptide state into a peptide state. Those are then split into a dipeptide state. Those are eventually converted into amino acids and sucked up into my blood stream. That happens over the length of about 24 feet.

The proteins are digested and absorbed in my duodenum, jejunum, and ileum. The fats in my 'ham' and the Miracle Whip are then assaulted by a secretion of bile from the liver. The bile is made from my own old red blood cells. I start to feel sick at that thought, and then realize with a bit of relief, that I no longer have anything in my stomach to throw up. It is all in my small intestine. The bile waited patiently in my gall bladder for the food to enter the small intestine.

When it did, WHAM! It rushed into my duodenum (the first part of my small intestine) to breakdown my fat molecules. I can feel the fat molecules being emulsified by the bile in my duodenum. The fat droplets are being broken down into even smaller droplets. I then feel my pancreas and glands in the jejunum and ileum release lipase. Immediately it begins to work at the very small drops of fat.

A, the poor Miracle Whip. It rips the bonds and makes the drops of Miracle Whip fat into fatty acids and glycerol Some of the molecules of fatty acids and glycerol are then whisked away into my blood through the mucus membranes and lacteals of my small intestine. The villi and micro villi also assist in the absorption. Thank goodness for those things. Without them, there would be a lot less absorption. I can feel their nourishing power already.

Finally, the pancreas and small intestine release sucrase, lactase, maltase, and amylase. These four enzymes set at breaking down the carbohydrates. They slowly break them down from double sugars like maltose, sucrose, and lactose, into much more simple sugars like glucose, g lactose, and fructose. Some of the simple sugars are absorbed into the capillaries in the villi and micro villi into my blood to sustain my body.

The rest of my incompletely digested 'ham's andwich passes to the valve. It opens as though on command and allows the rest of my 'ham's andwich into my large intestine. The sandwich passes the good-for-nothing appendix into my caecum (the first region of my colon). Through more peristalsis of my smooth muscle cells the food makes its way into my ascending colon. The E coli attack and break down what is left of the fat from the Miracle Whip, the protein from the 'ham,' and the carbohydrate from the Buttermilk White bread. The food makes its way to the transverse colon and extra nutrients are released form the cellulose of the undigested particles.

It continues on to the descending colon. There I start to manufacture vitamin K and other B-complex vitamins. Those are then absorbed into my large intestine. The waste of my 'ham's andwich keeps going. The removes any excess water that was not absorbed in my small intestine. It doesn't have to do much work, because there is hardly any area for absorption.

The waste then travels down my sigmoid colon to my rectum. There the waste, now called fecal matter (A.K.A. feces) is stored until I have enough to defecate through my anal sphincter. That was only my the first bite of my 'ham's andwich. I have the rest of the sandwich to go.

But I think my digestive system is a little screwed up. For most people, the whole digestion process takes quite a few days. The food stays in their stomach for up to eight hours, the small intestine for a long time, and in the large intestine for anywhere from three to five days. For me, this whole process took a little over five minutes., I'm looking forward to my second bite..