What Is Digestive Juice?

Digestive juices are one of the vital compounds in complex organisms like humans and animals. When people eat food, they are eating energy that is trapped in the form of various simple molecular structures, like carbohydrates and proteins. The body cannot immediately use these compounds; it has to break them down into smaller pieces and absorb them first. Digestive juices are the key mover in this breakdown process.

Definition

• Digestive juice is actually a collection of many different juices that act on foods as they enter the body. Different organs specialize in different types of digestive juice, which are designed to break down specific food particles. Some juices are highly acidic, while others use enzymes to break down food. The goal of digestive juices is to turn complex food compounds into more simple molecules so they can be passed throughout the body and used by cells.

Types

• There are many common types of digestive juice that many people are aware of, such as saliva, which is secreted by salivary glands in the mouth. Bile, which is created by the liver and then passed into the intestines, is another well-known digestive juice. However, there are other lesser known juices like proteinase and lipase, which do their job at secondary stages after food has been broken down but before it can be absorbed into the bloodstream.

Starch

• Starch is any carbohydrate-based food compound that stores energy and is common in plants. A digestive juice called amylase breaks down starch in the body, turning it into complex sugars known as maltose, a form of food that the body can use much more easily. Amylase is made in the pancreas but is also present in saliva.

Fats

• The body has difficulty absorbing fats in their natural state, so it uses several digestive juices to break them down. The first is bile, which dissolves the fat into smaller pieces that become soluble in water. Lipase is another digestive juice produced by the pancreas, which breaks the fat down into fatty acids and glycerol.

Proteins

• Proteins are chains of molecules that are used by the body to add more cell material or repair damaged cells. To break apart proteins into usable chunks, the body uses hydrochloric acid, which is produced by gastric glands in the digestive system. This turns proteins into small, split proteins that are then passed onto proteinase, another digestive juice created by the pancreas. Proteinase turns split proteins into usable peptides and polypeptides.