Food contains nutrients – substances necessary for the growth, repair, and maintenance of body tissues and the regulation of vital processes.
Types Of Nutrients
Carbohydrates provide the body with energy.
Proteins help maintain healthy skin, bones, muscles, and blood. Proteins also help regulate body processes, including the transport of oxygen and nutrients into and out of cells; blood clotting; and the production of antibodies that help fight diseases.
Minerals provide the body with building materials and help regulate its activity, as do proteins.
Calcium and phosphorus build strong bones and teeth, iron contributes to healthy blood, and iodine helps keep the thyroid gland functioning.
Vitamins For example, vitamin B1, or thiamin, helps regulate the release of energy from carbohydrates, promotes a healthy appetite, and helps the nervous system function.
Other essential elements for the health of the body include water, oxygen, and fiber. It is involved in most of the body’s processes, such as temperature regulation, the transport of nutrients into cells, and the removal of waste products from cells.
Oxygen is not a nutrient because it breathes and does not eat, but it is essential for life.
It adds bulk to the diet and helps keep the intestines healthy. Too few nutrients, too many nutrients, or an imbalance of nutrients (for example, too many carbohydrates and not enough fruits and vegetables) can lead to malnutrition.
Malnutrition
Malnutrition is a form of malnutrition. It is usually associated with hunger.
To get the right amount of nutrients, people must choose from a range of food types: cereal grains; fruits and vegetables; legumes, meat, poultry, fish and eggs; and milk and milk products. The food pyramid outlines the suggested amounts of these different types of food that people should eat each day.
Cereal grains
Globally, cereal grains are the most important food.
Wheat is the main ingredient in most bread, cookies, cakes, biscuits, pasta, and some breakfast cereals. China, the United States of America, Russia, Ukraine, India, France, and Canada are the main wheat-producing countries. Often eaten as bread, wheat serves as a staple food for people living in temperate climates.
Hominy grits, cornbread, popcorn, and tortillas are all made from corn. American farmers produce more than 30 percent of the world’s corn; of that 40 percent, most is used to feed livestock.
These grains are also a staple food for people in parts of Africa and Asia, where they are used in bread, porridge, and cakes.
Three other bowls of cereal are important in many regions – barley, oats, and rye.
Oats are mainly used as livestock feed but are also used in oatmeal and other breakfast cereals. After wheat, rye is the second most common grain used as bread flour; the two are often mixed in pieces of bread.
