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Question of the fortnight: How do you eat without teeth?

Blogging science to life

Fri 30 July 2010, Written by: Nicole

How do you eat without teeth?

Question from Bethany aged 7 via At-Bristol News and Views.

Well, that is an interesting question! Teeth play an important part in the digestion process; in fact they start the whole thing off. There are two different types of digestion – mechanical digestion and chemical digestion. Your teeth are involved in the mechanical type, which breaks pieces of food in to a manageable size for you to swallow. The mechanical digestion which happens in your mouth is also known as chewing. Teeth cut and tear your food into smaller sized pieces so the enzymes in your saliva can start the chemical breakdown of food, without teeth the important chemical breakdown of food cannot start.

lost teeth! You have four different types of teeth, incisors, canines, premolars and molars, which breakdown the different types of food in our omnivorous diet. Some are sharp and pointy and used to tear and pierce meat, others are broad and flat and used to crush and grind plants and vegetables.

People who don’t have teeth need food to have been broken down into manageable chunks before it enters their mouths - so that the saliva can start working. This is why babies are often given soft foods which have already been mashed or cut up as they have no teeth of their own to do this.

If you have lost your teeth, you can get dentures, which are a set of false teeth. These can crush and tear of the food as teeth do. However certain tough or chewy foods may need to be avoided otherwise you could find the dentures get dislodged or worse come out mid-chew!

So to answer your question, you can eat without teeth but it is chewing which might be a bit more difficult!

You can find out even more about the digestive process when All About Us opens!

Every fortnight, we are answering your science questions about the human body. It's all part of finding out how amazing you are, in the run up to the opening of our new exhibition All About Us in February 2011.