question_answer

Bile juice does not contain any enzyme but bile salts are important for digestion and absorption of fats. State reason.

Answer:

Bile is a digestive juice secreted by the liver. Although it does not contains any digestive enzymes, it plays an important role in the digestion of fats.

Bile is alkaline and contains salts which helps to emulsify or break the fats (or lipids) present in the food. Thus, bile performs two functions:

(i) Makes the acidic food coming from the stomach alkaline so that pancreatic enzymes can act on it,

(ii) Bile salts break the fats present in the food into small globules making it easy for the enzymes to act and digest them.