Basic Nutrition & Nutrient Requirements

Humans have adapted to live in a wide range of ecosystems, and, as a consequence, to consume a wide range of foods. We tend to eat foods that are easily available, that suit our cultural preferences, eating lifestyle and buying power. We eat foods. Those foods are packed with desirable nutrients and non-nutrients components that can nourish our bodies and promote longevity. Also foods can be deficient in protective components or contain undesirable substances that can accelerate the incidence of diet-related diseases and early death. Foods contain many components that we need to survive, including proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals. Some of those nutrients are abundant in the foods that we regularly consume, we call them macronutrients, they include protein; carbohydrates - starches and sugars; and lipids fats and oils). We consume other nutrients in small amounts, ranging from a few grams to a few micrograms per day. We loosely call them micronutrients (vitamins and minerals). Also we consume many of non-nutrient components that are present in our food that are very important to preserve health, including fibers and hundreds of phytochemicals. Some nutrients share commonalities in their functions. All the macronutrients are metabolic fuels since they can be used by our cells to produce energy. In addition, nutrients have very specific functions. As an example, vitamin K is used by one enzyme to produce one reaction that has vital importance for many purposes, including blood coagulation, bone formation, gene expression. Other nutrients have a wide range of applications; protein provides 20 amino acids that are used to produce more than 80,000 proteins that are encoded in the DNA. Each protein has a very specific function. Many proteins act as enzymes that accelerate chemical reactions in the cells. Some enzymes digest (break down) large molecules like protein, starches, sugars, fats and oils present in foods into small molecules that can be absorbed though the intestinal cells. Most vitamins work as coenzymes because they work together with thousands of proteins called enzymes. Those vitamins that act as coenzymes assist the enzymes to perform very specialized chemical reactions. Most minerals work together with the enzymes as cofactors to facilitate the chemical reactions performed by the enzymes. Early studies in nutrition science addressed the following questions: a) what are the chemical substances (nutrients) present in foods that are essential for human health and development? b) What are the major functions of specific nutrients? c) How much of those nutrients do we require to maintain health? The purpose of this module is to help you answer those questions. Valuable resources to answer those questions include: