Which order of the following words is correct?

The logical order is cooking, then mastication, then digestion. Cooking comes first because heat and preparation soften food and make it safe and easier to handle before it enters the mouth. Mastication, the mechanical chewing done by teeth mixed with saliva, follows and breaks food into smaller pieces. Digestion, the chemical breakdown by enzymes along the alimentary canal, comes last.

Why the other options fail:

• A puts digestion first, but digestion cannot start until food has been prepared, chewed and swallowed.
• B places cooking after mastication, which reverses the real order of preparation.
• C gets cooking right but puts digestion before mastication. Enzymatic breakdown needs food already broken into smaller pieces, so this sequence is physically impossible.

The core concept is the sequence of food processing. It links to the human digestive system in Biology and to nutrition and food-safety themes in Mains General Studies. Keep the stages distinct: preparation, physical breakdown, and chemical breakdown.

Trap: aspirants often answer from the textbook order of digestion alone and skip cooking, which is a step before the body acts on food at all.