Download Understanding Although most people realize that their food habits

Understanding
Although most people realize that their food habits affect their health, they often choose foods for other reasons.
After all, foods bring to the table a variety of pleasures, traditions, and associations as well as nourishment. The
challenge, then, is to combine favorite foods and fun times with a nutritionally balanced diet.
Nutrition - the science of foods and the nutrients and other substances they contain, and of their
actions within the body (including ingestion, digestion, absorption, transport, metabolism, and excretion).
A broader definition includes the social, economic, cultural, and psychological implications of food and
eating.
Food - products derived from plants or animals that can be taken into the body to yield energy and
nutrients for the maintenance of life and the growth and repair of tissues.
Diet - the foods and beverages a person eats and drinks.
Carelessness about food choices can contribute to many chronic diseases.
Reasons people select certain types of food:
Habit: eating cereal every morning for breakfast because they have always eaten cereal for breakfast.
People eat foods they grew up eating.
Ethnicity: food choices are ethnic heritage and tradiiton. American's have a multi-ethnic influence.
Social reasons: enjoying companionship while eating.
Availability, convenience, economy: quick and easy to prepare, within financial means; requiring
little preparation, ready-to-eat meals, food delivered; limits food choices
Positive and negative associations: foods associated with happy occasions; hot dogs, cake and ice
cream; aversions to food they ate that made them sick or food forced to eat; foods used as rewards or
punishments.
Emotional comfort: eat to relieve boredom, depression, or to calm anxiety; foods influence brain's
chemistry; carbohydrates and alcohol tend to calm the nerves; caffeine activate; sharing foods at times of
bereavement serves both the givern's need to provide comfort and the receiver's need to be cared for and
to interact with others.
Values: religious beliefs, political views, environmental concerns; i.e. Christians forgo meat during Lent,
Jewish law has set of dietary rules, Muslims fast during Ramadan; boycotting fruits and veggies picked by
Understanding Nutrition, Eleventh Edition; Ellie Whitney and Sharon Rady Rolfes, Chapter 1
exploited migrant workers; buy direct from farmers; some reject food treated with irradiation or
genetically modified food.
Body weight and image: foods to improve physical appearance and avoid those that negatively
impact physical appearance; fad diets; dietary supplements.
Nutrition and health benefits: food choices to benefit health; fortified foods- bread, milk, orange
juice; foods low in fat; oatmeal to lower cholesterol.
Functional foods - are foods that contain physiologically active compounds that provide health
benefits beyond their nutriet contributions; sometimes called designer foods or nutraceuticals.
Phytochemicals - non-nutrient compounds found in plant-derived foods that have biological
activity in the body (phyto = plant)
Do you ever think of yourself as a biological being made of carefully arranged atoms, molecules, cells, tissues, and
organs? The atoms, molecules, and cells of your body continually move and change, even though the structures of your
tissues and organs and your external appearance remain relatively constant.
Skin is replaced entire every seven years.
The fat beneath your skin is not the same fat that was there a year ago.
Your oldest red blood cell is only 120 days old.
The entire lining of your digestive tract is renewed every 3 to 5 days.
Energy - the capacity to do work The energy in food is chemical energy. The body can convert this
chemical energy to mechanical, electrical, or heat energy.
Nutrients - chemical substances obtained from food and used in the body to provide energy, structural
materials, and regulating agents to support growth, maintenance, and repair of the body's tissues.
Nutrients may also reduce the risks of some diseases.
Body Composition
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
Man
Carbohydrates
Woman
Fat
Water
Understanding Nutrition, Eleventh Edition; Ellie Whitney and Sharon Rady Rolfes, Chapter 1
Essential nutrients - nutrients a person must obtain from food because the body cannot make
them for itself in sufficient quantity to meet physiological needs. About 40 nutrients are
currently known to be essential for human beings. These are needed from outside the body,
normally from foods.
Macronutrients - the body requires these in large amounts: carbohydrates, fat, and protein;
these are also called energy-yielding nutrients.
Micronutrients - vitamins and minerals required only in small amounts.
Eggs, turkey bacon, toast with a bowl of fruit is a low energy density breakfast.
About 500 calories.
Donuts and coffee is a higher energy breakfast. Two donuts deliver the
same calories, about 500.
Which do you think you get the most nutrients from? Which is actually more food?
The amount of energy a food provides depends on how much carbohydrate, fat and protein it contains. One other
substance contributes energy -- alcohol. Alcohol is not considered a nutrient because it interferes with the growth,
maintenance, and repair of the body and poses harms to the body.
Vitamins - organic, essential nutrients required in small amounts by the body for health; do not
provide energy; facilitate the release of energy from carbohydrate, fat and protein. They are
vulnerable to destruction by heat, light, and chemical agents. Almost every function of the body
requires vitamins to happen. One vitamin stops the bleeding when you cut yourself, another
helps the skin repair itself.
Wise cooks therefore use very little water and low to moderate heat to cook vegetables.
Minerals - inorganic elements. Some minerals (16) are essential nutrients required in small
amounts by the body for health. Some minerals are environmental contaminants disrupting
body functions. They also can be lost during food-refining processes or during cooking when
they leach into water that is discarded.
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Understanding Nutrition, Eleventh Edition; Ellie Whitney and Sharon Rady Rolfes, Chapter 1