 The stomach is a muscular, balloon-like  organ in your abdomen. It temporarily stores boluses of food coming from the  esophageal tract and continues the digestive process through mechanical and  chemical digestion. Food in the stomach turns into a thick, fluid-like  substance called chyme and eventually passes into the small intestine.
            The stomach is a muscular, balloon-like  organ in your abdomen. It temporarily stores boluses of food coming from the  esophageal tract and continues the digestive process through mechanical and  chemical digestion. Food in the stomach turns into a thick, fluid-like  substance called chyme and eventually passes into the small intestine.
            
            The stomach is primarily composed of four  regions – the cardia, fundus, body and pylorus. The end of the esophagus is attached to the stomach at the cardia. Just above the cardia is a dome-shaped area called the fundus,  which contain gastric glands that secrete a mix of gastric juices.
            
            The largest area of the stomach is called  its body. Its surface folds into itself as ridges called rugae that maximize  the amount of digestion that the stomach can carry out. Both the gastric juices  that the stomach produces, and its own churning motion, contribute to  digestion.
            
            After six to eight hours, chyme will slowly  exit the stomach through the pylorus. This region connects the stomach to the  duodenum of the small intestine.
            
            While an empty stomach is fairly small,  being the size of your fist, it can stretch to 75 times that size to  accommodate as much as four liters of food and drink.
            
            We’ve constructed this
            
             stomach diagram  labeled
            
            with the regions of the stomach to clearly visualize how  food continues its digestive process before entering the small intestine.