Identify and describe the six major processes involved in gastrointestinal activity

Ingestion is the active, voluntary process of placing food into the mouth. Propulsion involves all of the actions involved in moving food along the alimentary canal from the mouth to the anus, including swallowing, peristalsis, segmentation, and mass movements. Mechanical digestion involves all of the activities that break food down into smaller pieces to prepare them for further degradation by enzymes. Chemical digesting, the next step of food breakdown, involves the sequence of steps by which large food molecules are broken down to their building blocks by enzymes. Absorption is the mechanism by which digested end products are moved from the lumen of the GI tract into the blood or lymph. The ²nal process is defecation, which is the elimination of indigestible substances from the body via the anus as feces