Nutrition is essential for living. A lot of ignorance is connected with nutrition and diet. One can eat to live or live to eat, those who eat to live are much healthier than the ones who live to eat. The idea is to eat a nourishing and well balanced diet in order to remain at the optimum fitness level. This chapter is all about the right diet and the ill effects of the wrong one.
It is essential for a person to control the diet in a manner that the essential nutrients are obtained by the body to keep it in optimum functioning level. At the same time, care has to be taken to avoid abusing the systems by loading them with harmful food elements. We need to eat a variety of food so that the body obtains all the vitamins, minerals and nutrients required by it.
Nutrients can broadly be divided into two categories –macronutrients and micronutrients
Macronutrients are the foods that should form the bulk of our diet. All of the foods you eat are composed of three macronutrients:
Carbohydrates
Protein and
Fat.
Some foods are primarily carbohydrate (bread); others are mainly protein, and some are pure fat. Other foods are combinations of two or all three. A slice of pizza is a perfect example. The crust and tomato sauce provide the carbohydrate, and the cheese provides protein and fat. In order to properly function, your body needs all three of these macronutrients in approximately the following ratio: 55 percent carbohydrate, 15 percent protein and no more than 30 percent total fat.
Micronutrients are composed of vitamins and minerals. They are the key to all the complex reactions that take place in your body. Although they don’t provide energy directly, vitamin and minerals work together to help carbohydrate; protein and fat produce energy, to assist with protein synthesis and to help keep the body functioning normally. Compared with the macronutrients (protein, carbohydrate, fat), vitamins and minerals are needed in small amounts.
Carbohydrates – include sugars, starches and related substances, which are chemical compounds of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Plants make carbohydrates from carbon dioxide and water, using the energy from the sun. Potatoes, pasta (spaghetti etc) bread, rice, and other grains are rich in carbohydrate. Cellulose and other indigestible carbohydrates are an important part of the diet, as a source of fibre, which aids the passage of material through the bowel.
Proteins – are the essential ‘building blocks’ of the living cells and comprise about 12 per cent of the weight of the human body (water 70 per cent, fat 15 per cent). Proteins are made up from some 22 different amino acids. Proteins can be made by the body into an enormous variety of shapes to do various different jobs. Enzymes, the biological catalysts of the body, are all proteins and there are many thousands of them in the body-each one different. Proteins in the food are broken down by digestion into amino acids, which are then rearranged into new proteins needed by the body. All necessary protein is obtained from bread, grains and beans, although meat fish and eggs are good sources.
Vitamins – are substances needed by the body, which the body cannot make for itself from raw materials. Vitamins are only needed in small amounts, mostly as catalysts helping along vital chemical reactions. Shortage of vitamins cause deficiency such as scurvy (shortage of vitamin C), rickets (shortage of vitamin D), beri beri (shortage of Vitamin B) and others. A balanced diet contains all the necessary vitamins.