Essential Nutrients: Fueling Your Body for Life
Food and Nutrition: Fueling Your Body
Food is the voluntary process performed by human beings to eat and deliver nutrients to the body for maintenance and development. Nutrition is the collection and use of nutrients and energy obtained from food, necessary for life. Foods are processed or natural products that can be ingested, digested, and absorbed. They contain energy and nutrients and are recognized as such by a social group.
Understanding Nutrients
Nutrients are chemical substances contained in food that the cells of our body need continuously to perform their vital functions. There are six types of nutrients:
- Carbohydrates
- Lipids
- Proteins
- Vitamins
- Minerals
- Water
According to their composition, nutrients are classified as:
- Organic nutrients: carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, and vitamins.
- Inorganic nutrients: water and minerals.
Based on their role, we distinguish:
- Energy nutrients: carbohydrates and lipids, which provide our body with the energy needed to perform activities.
- Structural or plastic nutrients: proteins, mineral elements, and water, which are the materials necessary for our cells and tissues to grow and renew.
- Regulatory nutrients: vitamins, minerals, water, and some proteins involved in regulating vital functions.
Carbohydrates: Energy Source
Their function is to provide energy. We distinguish between:
- Simple carbohydrates: sugars such as glucose, sucrose, fructose (fruit), and lactose (milk).
- Complex carbohydrates: starches such as starch (grains, legumes, and potatoes).
Some carbohydrates, like cellulose (vegetable fiber), do not provide energy because we cannot digest them. However, they regulate intestinal transit by increasing stool volume.
Lipids: Energy and More
Their main function is to provide energy. Other functions include:
- Forming structures: plasma membrane, protective fat around the kidneys.
- Constituting energy reserves: adipose tissue.
- Thermal insulation: adipose tissue.
- Promoting reactions: lipid vitamins.
The best-known lipids are triglycerides and fatty acids from animal fats and vegetable oils, and cholesterol, abundant in egg yolks.
Proteins: Building Blocks and Regulators
They perform many functions. The two main ones are:
- Forming structures: actin and myosin (muscle), collagen (bone, cartilage, tendons, and ligaments).
- Constituting enzymes: molecules that regulate food digestion and all internal chemical cell reactions.
Other functions include forming antibodies, constituting some hormones like growth hormone and insulin, and serving as an energy source in cases of extreme need, like blood albumin.
Vitamins: Essential Regulators
These are organic nutrients with an essential regulatory role for the proper functioning of the body. A varied diet contains all the necessary vitamins. Vitamin deficiency can lead to diseases.
- Water-soluble vitamins: dissolve in water, like vitamin C (abundant in oranges).
- Fat-soluble vitamins: dissolve in lipids, like vitamin D (present in milk).
Water: The Medium of Life
Its main function is to create the environment in which all chemical reactions characteristic of living beings occur. It forms the internal environment of cells, the intercellular fluid, and the circulating internal environment of animals (blood and lymph) and plants (sap). It is the medium that carries all nutrients and is found in all foods to a greater or lesser extent.
Mineral Elements: Structure and Regulation
These are inorganic nutrients with structural and regulatory functions required in very small quantities. They form skeletal structures (calcium phosphate and calcium carbonate in bones), maintain internal environmental salinity (sodium chloride and potassium chloride in the blood), and are involved in forming specific chemicals (iron in hemoglobin and iodine in the hormone thyroxine).