Teaching Anatomy and Physiology of a Food-Related Social Issue

Physiology & Food Related Social Issue

Physiology and food-related social issue

The chosen food-related social issue is the advertising of junk food as appealing to children. For years, the junk food industry has been accused for promoting obesity and ill-health among children Linn and Novosat 135.

Junk food often contains unhealthy components because of the high content of calories, fats, and sugar Kime 317.

The figure below shows that from the 1960s to the year 2008, the number of children and teenagers with obesity has increased significantly from about 4% across to about 17% - 20% all ages.

www.bariatric-surgery-source.com/child-obesity-statistics.html

The specific research question related to this food-related social issue is "what is the relationship between eating junk food and obesity?" This research question aims at identifying the link between the body's digestion and absorption processes and junk food that has a high calorie, fat, and sugar content. This research question is informed by the fact that the obesity epidemic in children and adolescents in the United States suggests that eating these unhealthy foods leads to high levels of absorption of these fats and sugars in the junk food and the levels of fats increase because of the sedentary nature of these children.

To teach the digestion and absorption concept of anatomy and physiology, it will be important to start at the mouth where the food is ingested and broken down into smaller pieces that can be swallowed. This will then follow the whole digestion process including the six essential activities: ingestion, propulsion, mechanical breakdown, digestion, absorption, and defecation that are involved in digestion.

Ingestion involves deglutination where the food is swallowed after being broken down by chewing in the mouth. After ingestion, the food is propelled down the esophagus through a process called peristalsis into the stomach where mechanical breakdown once again happens through churning. The food is then digested using the digestive juices in the stomach before going into the small intestine where it is broken down again through segregation and absorbed by the lymph vessels and blood vessels. In the large intestines, the waste is separated and channeled to the anus for defecation.

In teaching about digestion, it will be important to highlight the hormones that facilitate the release of digestive juices and other aspects of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract such as the regulatory mechanisms that exist. These regulatory mechanisms respond to stretch when the person swallows a huge amount of food and there are substrates that activate or inactivate digestive glands.