How do amoebas digest food inside food vacuoles?

Amoebas digest food through a process known as intracellular digestion, which occurs within membrane-bound chambers called food vacuoles.1

The process follows these steps:

• Ingestion: Amoebas use temporary cytoplasmic extensions called pseudopodia to flow around and surround food particles. This process, called phagocytosis, encloses the food within a membrane-bounded chamber known as a food vacuole.21
• Digestion: Once the food is trapped inside the vacuole, the amoeba secretes digestive enzymes into the chamber to break down the particles. This is facilitated by lysosomes—organelles containing hydrolytic enzymes—which fuse with the food vacuole.231
• Absorption: The enzymes convert the complex food material into simpler compounds that are small enough to cross the vacuole membrane and be incorporated into the amoeba's cellular substance.13

This method allows the amoeba to process nutrients without a specialized digestive tract, as it lacks a mouth or anus and can perform these functions at any point on its cell surface.24