What Chewing Does in the First 30 SECONDS

Digestion does not start in your stomach. It starts the second food hits your tongue.

You chew for a few seconds and swallow without thinking. But in that short window, what is your mouth actually doing to your food?

Two things happen at once. Your teeth grind the food into a soft, wet lump, exposing far more surface for chemicals to attack. At the same time, your saliva pours in carrying an enzyme called amylase. Amylase immediately goes to work on starch, snapping the long starch chains into small sugar molecules. So a bite of bread or potato is already being turned into sugar while it is still in your mouth, long before it reaches your stomach.

Want to feel it happen? Hold a plain cracker on your tongue without chewing. Within about thirty seconds it starts tasting sweet, because the amylase is converting its starch into sugar in real time.

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