The Gallbladder: An Organ You Can Live Without
The gallbladder is a small, muscular, pear-shaped sac nestled in a depression on the right underside of the liver. It holds about a quarter of a cup of a yellowish-green, pasty material called bile. Bile contains water, bile salts and acids, pigments, cholesterol, phospholipids (a type of fat molecule), and electrolytes (electrically charged fluids). Bile tastes bitter, and this is why the word bilehas come to denote bitterness. Bile breaks up, or emulsifies, large globs of fat into smaller globs in the small intestine, a first step in fat digestion.