Understanding the Nutrients in Food Will Take a You a Long, Long Way
The basic foundation of nutrition is understanding what a food contains and how it affects your health and well-being. Which foods and drinks will help maintain your body and provide the substance to improve your current state of health? Will they improve your strength training regimen? The nutrients in food is what keeps us healthy, drives our hectic lives and ensures that our bodies, from internal organs and muscles to the intricate structures of your bones, are maintained like a well-oiled machine. Except this machine you’ll need to maintain every day instead of every 3,000 miles. Again, the nutrients and energy provided from food is the secret to lifelong health. But it shouldn’t be a secret! The Nutrients in Food: Basic Concept of Energy
You guessed it, calories are measured by measuring how much heat is produced when a certain food is ignited. The same thing happens in your body! No matter the nutritional source, anything you ingest is worth a certain amount of energy when your body attempts to metabolize it. The bottom line is that food = energy. You need it to live. You need it to maintain your hectic life, in the weight room, at work, or trying to keep up with your kids! Problems only arise when people start eating too much! Then when they realize they’ve gained too much weight, they starve themselves in an attempt to lose 25 pounds in a week. This is not how your body works. Now that we have the whole energy concept down pat, let’s talk a little more about the actual nutrients and what it means to be a nutrient.
The Nutrients in Food: What Does This Actually Mean? What is a nutrient? In short, it’s a chemical compound that your body either metabolizes for energy or uses for the purpose of building other molecules and maintaining tissue structures. Basically, anything that your body does requires some nutrient: from your senses, to digesting an apple, to feeling sad, to reading this page. Any natural activity of your body requires some sort of nutrient for the action to occur. Let’s dig a little deeper, shall we?
To describe these two words simply, a macronutrient is either a big molecule or we need a lot of it to survive while a micronutrient is either small or we need very little of it. Did you see that? Remember, the prefix macro- means “big” while micro- means “small” or “little”. It’s easiest to separate the groups by thinking about which ones your need more of. For example, proteins, fats, carbohydrates and water would be macronutrients because we need a lot of them. Vitamins, minerals and trace metals are micronutrients because we don’t need much of them. The Nutrients in Food: Essential Nutrients The whole concept of eating revolves around essential nutrients: it’s stuff that we can’t make on our own! Heck, if we could make everything ourselves, there’d be no point to eating, or better yet, allowing anything to enter our bodies. We wouldn’t have developed digestive systems at all if this were the case. We’d be self-maintaining perpetually active robots that can survive anything. If there’s an essential nutrient that you’re lacking, you’ll know it and you’re doctor will know it. In fact, each and every essential nutrient is associated with a disease or condition. For example, scurvy results from a lack of vitamin C, Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome results from a lack of vitamin B1 (a.k.a niacin) and a lack of vitamin D in children can cause rickets. It’s hard to even imagine the problems you’d develop if you didn’t eat anything.
The modern human society is the only population on earth that doesn’t hunt and gather normally. Yes, we do to an extent, but this is only done through breeding and game hunting. So, what’s the problem? Well, nutrients spoil when they’re not eaten immediately. In order for us to get all of our essential nutrients, we’d need to catch a buffalo and cook the whole thing within a few hours before all of it’s nutritional value goes to waste. How do we prevent this from happening? The answer is food processing. There it is, I said it. Most people think food processing takes away from its nutritional value. The fact is that food processing and added preservatives prevent the nutrients in food from going to waste. We do this stuff without even thinking! Why do you think the refrigerator and freezer were invented? How about the stove? The answer is to extend the life of the food (forms of processing!). So, if you’re against processed foods, you might as well go and empty your refrigerator, throw out your toaster and sell your stove on eBay (I’m not being literal here!). The Nutrients in Food: Or Should I Say, the Nutrients in You!
This is a fantastic way to show what happens when you starve yourself. When you don’t eat anything, where does your body get the micro and macronutrients it needs? (see above). Your brain says to itself, “I’m not getting any food, I need to find a way to survive.” So what happens? Your body metabolizes stored fats and proteins (from your muscles, including your heart) for energy.
Sure, being thin is generally viewed as a healthy look, but is it really? Thin is not the same as fit or healthy! The nutrients in food are our saviors – we can’t survive without them! Return from Nutrients in Food to the Nutrition Guide
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The Nutrients in Food
Back in physical chemistry class in college, I remember doing bomb calorimetry experiments. Basically, we stuck m&m’s® in the device and lit it on fire with an ignition wire. The calorimeter determined exactly how many joules of energy (or heat) was released before the candy fizzled out (1 Cal = ~4.14 Joules). I can’t remember what the exact number was, but I calculated the same number of calories from the calorimeter as was listed on the nutrition label of the m&m’s® packet.
The Nutrients in Food: Micronutrients and Macronutrients
As you know, eating has been around for a long time (Ha-Ha!). The prehistoric humans did it, we do it and animals do it. Here’s something you might not have thought of, though…
We’re all animals. I’m not sure if that’s politically correct or not, but the point I’m trying to make is that we’re beings that are made out of the same nutrients as we eat. We’re made completely of the macro- and micronutrients. You know, fats, proteins, water, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals. The proportions are different for every individual, but you understand the point.