Nutrition and Diet

diet, Health tips,

so why do we actually need food

Carbohydrates

well is to suppliers with fuel for energy it's to provide materials for growth and repair of tissues and is to help fight disease and keep our bodies healthy but what is in food well food can be split up into seven different nutrients carbohydrates lipids and proteins vitamins and minerals and fiber and water so carbohydrates carbohydrates can be in the form of simple sugars such as glucose lactose fructose or sucrose or it could be large polysaccharides big long chains of sugars like starch or glycogen and most of our carbohydrate comes in the form of starch from foods like potato rice and bread and what we use it for we use it in the body for respiration to release energy so if you know about the respiration equation you'll know it's glucose plus oxygen goes common oxide plus water plus energy so there glucose you need for that reaction comes from our carbohydrates but if you have too much carbohydrates too much energy then your body decides to store that as fat and it can create give your obesity or could cause tooth decay lipids now lipids is the proper.

Lipids.

name for fats and oils food high animal fats includes meat butter cheese milk eggs and oily fish and foods high in plant oils include olive oil sunflower oil rape soil and margarine on the whole lipids from animals which are tend to be saturated fats are worse for you than the unsaturated fats you get from plant oils now what we use fat for fat has quite a bad name but actually we need fat in our diet which don't need too much of it it's very important for making cell membranes for insulation for protection of organs and as a store of energy.

proteins

 proteins now animal foods high in protein include meat fish cheese and eggs you can't get protein from plants things like beans peas and nuts but meat is a primary source of protein it's a better source of protein and what we need it for with it for growth and repair of tissues replacing cells very important when you're growing as a baby or an adolescent but also even when you stopped growing you need to replace cells constantly every day and we need proteins in order to do that vitamins so there's couple of vitamins.

Vitamins

you need to know about vitamin A which is used to maintain the retina in your eye and you get that from carrots fish liver oils liver butter and margarine so that old wives tale of carrots helping you see in the dark there's actually bit of truth to that because they're high in vitamin A which is used to help build your retina vitamin C which is used to sort of stick cells together lining surfaces to make stuff called we call connective tissues and it's found in fruit and vegetables especially citrus fruits and if you don't get enough vitamin C it can cause scurvy where you're sort of fingernails will start to bleed and bleeding gums very famously pirates always got scurvy because if you went on long voyages you could never take any fresh fruit and vege with you even though you could take animals to slaughter and and carbohydrates you couldn't get vitamin C and lastly vitamin D which helps bones absorb calcium and you get that from things like fish nibblers again and also from dairy products but it's also made in your skin when you're exposed to sunlight what about minerals so there's two major.

Minerals 

minerals really that you need to know about but a lot of these minerals are the same elements you would find on a periodic table we're gonna look at calcium which is used for making teeth and bones very high in dairy products and fish and bread and some vegetables if you don't get enough calcium then your bones won't develop properly you can have a disease called rickets and iron which is used to make hemoglobin in your red blood cells so that they can carry oxygen is very important and you get that from things like red meat liver eggs and some vegetables like spinach if you don't get enough iron you can end up with a disease called anemia a lot of people don't think water is a nutrient 

Water

 but it is and it's included in these seven nutrients and it's very very important we need it obviously to stay hydrated what that means really is to make sure that osmosis works properly between ourselves and our blood and our tissue fluid we don't want ourselves dribble up don't get enough water but equally we don't want our blood pressure step too high if we have too much so it's very important that water levels are maintained also because it's our blood plasma a lot of reactions take place there and we use it to transport stuff around our body so it's very very important you need to drink about between 1.5 and 2 liters of water a day the last Lutheran is now about is fiber.

 Fiber

 now dietary fiber isn't actually something that you digest and absorb but it's very very important for maintaining what we call digestive transit your food needs to pass through the digestive system from your mouth to your anus and along that to help it sort of along that journey we need the fiber now you get it from mostly cellulose that's found in plant cell walls that we eat so fruit and vegetables are very good sources of fiber and like I said it gives your gut something to push against so that it moves your the food through the digestive system now if you have too much though then it will move too far to the digestive system and you can end up with diarrhea and if you have too little then you can end up getting constipated because it won't move fast enough through.

now you don't need all these seven nutrients in equal amounts that wouldn't be a healthy diet a balanced diet has all the seven nutrients in the correct amounts so this pyramid here is a bit of a representation of that you have carbohydrates at the bottom there and then fruit and vegetables next one protein dairy and some fats at the top realistically now we're thinking actually need a lot more fruit and vegetables even that's shown by this pyramid a lot of people end up having too much dairy fats and protein and not enough of the fruit and vegetables underneath to maintain a healthy balanced diet but not everybody's diet is the same different people who have different jobs or different ages will potentially need different diets because they have different energy requirements the larger the average body mass the more energy is actually required a two-year-old child only needs about 5,000 kilojoules a day whereas a fifteen-year-old boy needs about 12,000 a day so people have different requirements if you're an athlete you're going to need to eat more food more calories get more energy if you're pregnant you're going to need to eat more as well not only because you're trying to feed a growing baby but because you are physically heavier and it takes more energy to move around on a daily basis you're going to use up more energy a manual worker is going to need more energy per day than an office worker so it's important to eat the diet that is right for your lifestyle.

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