Scientists are uncovering new information about digestion, which is an important step in the process of digestion. In the past, we thought of digestion of food as endothermic (as in it takes place at body temperature) but now we know that digestion of food is a process that takes place at a much colder temperature.
When you eat, you eat. When you digest food, it’s totally different. The digestive process is quite different because it’s not just about breaking down nutrients, it’s about breaking down the protein and carbohydrates of food. This means that the enzymes in your stomach work better at breaking down carbohydrates and proteins than they do at breaking down water or fats. So what happens when you eat is that the food doesn’t come out fully digested, so you have to break it down a little bit.
This is a common question you may get if you’re reading this article. It’s easy to get carried away with the “heat” of digestion in the gut, but the fact is the digestive process is actually very cold and is quite different from the heat we experience when we digest food. Exothermic digestion requires the creation of heat. This heat is generated from the chemical reactions of all the nutrients in the food, but is very slow to build up.
There is no question that digestion is an endothermic process. However, the process of digestion is not exclusively endothermic as it must also include the processes of synthesis (synthesis is an exothermic process) and breaking down (breaking down is an endothermic process). While the exact reasons for these processes are not completely understood; they are usually considered the most important stages of digestion. The rate of digestion is thought to be related to the temperature of the food.
Although digestion of food is considered to be an exothermic reaction, it may be that the digestion of food is endothermic. The digestion of food involves the process of breaking down the food particles to provide energy and the release of heat by breaking down the cell walls of the food. But does digestion of food endothermic or exothermic? While food is breaking down into calories, this may be an exothermic reaction as the digestive process may liberate heat to maintain the body temperature.
You might not be aware, but eating your food is quite an endothermic process. Your body heats up the food, and then the process is ended. However, if food has been cooked to the point of being in the upper range of temperature, it is considered a non-thermoneutral digestive process. You will feel as if you’ve lost heat because of your heat loss. When your body has to endure a long period of time without food, it produces waste products.
If you wish to learn more about digestion of food, we recommend reading the chapter Digestion of Food in the book The Science Behind Your Diet.
EET (Endothermic Energy Transducer) is an energy transducer which converts chemical energy into mechanical energy and vice versa. The temperature of the substance is converted from the thermo-electric effect (i.e. an increase in temperature of a substance causes an energy increase). In the same way, the digestion of food is a process which is endothermic and thus the digestion of food is endothermic.
