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What is digestion?

When you eat, your food begins a long journey through your body.
Most of your food is broken down into lots of tiny, simple pieces so that your body can use it.
This breaking- down process starts in your mouth and is called digestion. 
The various substances that aid in digestion are known as digestive juices.
Your body uses food to acquire energy. Food contains special chemicals that provide energy in your body’s cells.
Energy keeps all the different parts of your body working.
Without energy, all your muscles and every other part of you would stop working.
Food also helps your body grow and repair parts that have become worn out or damaged.

Food to keep you healthy

Food contains many different substances that work together to keep you going.
Food substances that give you energy are called carbohydrates and fats. Carbohydrates are found in foods like potatoes, rice, and bread. Milk, butter, and cheese are fatty foods.
The parts of your food that help your body grow and mend itself are called proteins. These are mainly found in meat, milk, eggs, nuts, and grain.
Your food also contains vitamins and minerals, which help you stay healthy. They make the chemicals in your body work properly.
Food also contains tough parts called fiber. Fiber helps to keep your intestines in good working order.
We take in water from our food, as well as water from what we drink.
Your blood needs a great deal of water to carry all these substances around your body.

Food Digestion Process

1. Your food is mixed and mashed as it passes through your body.
First of all, you chew it with your teeth. Then you mix it in your mouth with a liquid called saliva. At the back of the mouth is a leaf-shaped flap of muscle, called the epiglottis. 
As you swallow, this covers your trachea and stops food from entering your lungs.

2. After you have swallowed the food, it passes into your stomach, where a strong acid breaks it down.
This process is helped by special chemicals called enzymes. There are lots of muscles in the stomach wall that mix the food up with digestive juices. The stomach acid also helps to kill germs in your food.

3. From your stomach, food passes into the small intestine. This is where digestion mostly takes place. Muscles keep the food mixture moving around. The useful food substances pass through the wall of the small intestine and into your bloodstream. Your blood then carries them to where they are needed.

Parents often bribe, plead and even threaten their kids to get them to eat their veggies. And while this feeding strategy may get kids to reluctantly ingest their greens, studies show it makes healthful foods less attractive to children over the long haul. Its like kids take that pressure and translate it to mean "that food cant possibly taste good."

So what’s a parent to do?

Theres another way but the results wont become evident today, tomorrow or even next week. But if used consistently, the action plan below has a huge pay off. Thats because it will not only get your kids to eat more healthy foods while they are young, it will increase the likelihood theyll become adults who prefer nutritious fare. Lets take a look...

1. Make mealtime the no-pressure zone
   Early in her career, internationally recognized feeding expert and dietitian, Ellyn Satter, was counseling a mother distraught about her ultra-picky-eating child. In that moment Satter realized that parents can’t possibly be responsible for what their children eat. Their only responsibility, she explained to the mom, is to provide children with a variety of food.
   
   Ever since her revelation, Ellyn Satter has refined what she calls the Division of Responsibility, a simple and ingenious feeding strategy. Basically parents decide the “when,” “what,” and “where” of feeding and children decide the “whether” and “how much” of eating.
   
   So let your child know that you are in charge of what is served but that it’s up to them whether or not to eat. This no-pressure atmosphere increases the likelihood that kids will eat a wider variety of foods.
2. Give them structure
   Once parents stop pouring all their energy into trying to get their kids to eat, they can focus on providing balanced meals and snacks.
   
   Providing structure for meals and snacks has a number of advantages. First, it gives children plenty of opportunities to eat and be exposed to different foods. It also helps them to manage their hunger so they show up to the next meal hungry but not famished. And lastly, it keeps them from grazing on food between meals which can cause a low desire to eat at meal time.
   
   So provide structured meals including 3 meals and 2-3 in-between-meal snacks in a designated area like the kitchen table.
3. Make food familiar and eat it yourself
   According to a 2007 review published in Current Nutrition Food Science, a good way to encourage children to try new foods is repeated exposure and role modeling. That means the more often kids see a food, the more likely it is they’ll eventually eat it. And when they see a parent eating it, the odds they’ll eat it go up even more.
   
   The review also reveals that kids are more willing to try new foods when they are paired with other liked items. So at mealtime include your kid’s favorites along with plenty of whole grains, fruits, vegetables, lean meats, fish and nuts and seeds. And eat together as a family as often as you can.
4. Get them involved
   You’ve probably heard that having children help prepare meals is a good way to encourage eating. But theres one caveat. Dont make it all about getting them to eat. Why? Kids can smell an agenda from a mile away.
   
   Instead, have them help with meals to teach them something incredibly valuable: how to cook. When 18-year olds leave the house they should know how to prepare meals for themselves. If they can learn to make feeding themselves a priority, it will be easier for them to manage their weight and health.
   
   So have them help you pick out produce, get involved with food preparation and talk about how the food tastes. Older kids can even help plan weekly menus. And who knows? They could eventually end up making you dinner!
5. Be patient
   Getting your kids to try and accept a wide variety of foods does not happen overnight. But when you give children time and plenty of opportunities to learn (the same way you do with reading and writing) there will come a day when it all clicks. And everyone will ask you how your kid got to be such an adventurous eater.
   
   But the answer is never what parents think it will be. Structure, no pressure, repeated exposure, family meals, time and most of all trust.

Reference
Tanofsky-Kraff M, Haynos AF, Kottler LA, Yanovski SZ, Yanovski JA. Laboratory-based studies of eating among children and adolescents. Curr Nutr Food Sci. 2007;3(1):55-74.
Thanks to:

Maryann Tomovich Jacobsen. Maryann is a registered dietitian, mother of two and creator of www.RaiseHealthyEaters.com, a blog dedicated to providing parents with the most credible nutrition advice.