Food and drink enter your stomach and dissolve in a strong acid bath, then exits your stomach into your intestines for a good old squeeze over many hours.
When you pee or poo, it doesn’t burn at the exits.
Surely some stomach acid must enter the intestines? Where does the stomach acid go? What happens to it?
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As acid breaks things down, the acid itself gets broken down too. Your stomach controls how much acid it produces so that it’s enough to break down the food but not so much as to cause discomfort or injury.
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Your body (specifically your liver) produces a substance called [bile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bile), which is slightly basic. This mixes with the chyme (the stomach acid + food soup coming from your stomach) to both help digestion and to neutralize the acid, so that it doesn’t damage the rest of your body.
You actually don’t need stomach acid at all to digest food. Digestion is primarily a mechanical process. Some people literally don’t have acidic stomachs. Stomach acid is primarily there to prevent you from getting foodborne illnesses, the rare people who don’t have stomach acid have to be incredibly careful about what they eat because they can become ill very easily.
Right after the mixture of acid and food leaves the stomach, your pancreas adds a squirt of bicarbonate (which is basically antacid, a base) to neutralize the acid.
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