What happens when you try to mix oil and water? Would the same phenomenon occurring your gastrointestinal tract and how would you manage it to enable digestion and absorption to occur?

Oil and water don't mix-that's a concept you first met when you were looking at the cell membrane and its function. If you drop oil into water the oil form a ball. Add a drop of detergent to the water and the ball will break down. The lipids (fats) you eat in your diet will also form balls in the watery chyme in the small intestine. These balls will contain a lot of lipid but have a very small surface area which means that enzymes will not be able to effectively digester them. To break these balls down we need molecules that act as detergents and these are present in the bile which is produced in the liver and stored in the gallbladder. Diseases that block the bile duct, the tube which delivers the bile from the gallbladder to the small intestine, prevent adequate digestion of fat. As a result the undigested fat passes into the faeces, which become grey, very foul-smelling, and float in the toilet and refuse to flush away. This is known as steatorrhea. Another cause of steatorrhea is XO crying pancreatic insufficiency which is the failure of the pancreas to produce the lipases required for lipid digestion.