system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
If I swallow a large piece of food, will I still digest all of it?

I've have some idea how food moves around inside the body and some about the timeframes, but I've no idea of the capabilities and mechanics of the system.

Are large pieces of food broken into smaller pieces chemically somehow and then digested? Or does digestion happen layer-by-layer, no matter the size of the object? If so, will it just continue until it's all gone?
gpt
Digestion has a few phases. Your mouth begins the first part, where saliva breaks down starches. The stomach is next, which has two primary methods of digesting food: acid mostly kills bacteria, but does help to break down the structure of food. Pepsin is a very active digestive enzyme in the stomach that is activated by the acid. Primarily though, your stomach is a muscle, and churns the food to break it into pieces. Big chunks of food simply won't proceed out of the stomach after this: if you swallow a big piece of meat whole, it will slowly break apart in your stomach and won't move as a chunk into the intestines.

Your intestines are where the "real" digestion occurs. Bits of food (at this point called "chyme") are squirted through the pyloric sphincter into the intestine. Here is where we see real protein and fat digestion occur. Most nutrients are actually absorbed within the first foot of the intestine, fats take longer and are broken down and absorbed over the first few feet. The small intestine are where the primary enzymatic breakdown of food occurs; the stomach is mostly a preparatory step but is not a good environment for most protein activity (because it is so acidic).