Page 265 - In The Name Of Allah, The All-Merciful And Most Merciful

Harun Yahya (Adnan Oktar)

cy that causes whatever you eat come together in a shape like
a piece of syrupy cake so that you can swallow it. Without
saliva, we could not swallow, taste our food, talk comfortably,
or eat solid food. This would be a very difficult situation for
us.
Saliva secreted from three different glands enables us to
swallow our food easily and its chemical components breaks

this food down into useful parts. Our mouths work like a
chemistry laboratory that breaks down the starch in our food.
Salivary amylase, an enzyme found in saliva that is specially
produced for this work, breaks down starch and converts it
into sugar. This process of digestion that happens in the
mouth is chemical and mechanical (viz., the teeth), two dis-
tinct kinds of digestion that complement each other.

The tongue plays an important part in grinding the
food, for it is very sensitive to taste and allows chewed food
to pass easily through the throat. On its top surface and sides
are about 10,000 taste buds that are sensitive to the four tastes:
bitter, sweet, salty, and sour. Through them, we can taste what
we eat, even if we have never eaten that particular item be-
fore, because they do not confuse the tastes and each individ-
ual perceives the same taste in the same food. In other words,

bitter is always bitter, regardless of who is doing the eating
and tasting.
Some scientists regard the tongue as having an extraor-
dinary chemical technology. If it had only a few taste buds,
we could not perceive the taste of each piece of candy, grilled

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