Nutrition basics

Whenever you start learning something new you should always begin with understanding the basics. The same holds true with nutrition. Too many people just search for diets or exercise routines and reproduce them word by word without even thinking if those things are right for them at that certain moment, or even worse, if they work at all. This is the approach used by most fitness magazines which publish endless amounts of diets, or strength exercises. If you think about it, it is pretty clear that they are only interested in selling copies rather than educating people.

Maybe you have heard about the terms we’re going to discuss but you don’t know where exactly to place them in the whole picture. This article is designed to help you put these notions in their proper place.

Everything starts with food. Although food takes a variety of forms, colors or tastes they are all broken down into the same components called nutrients. Generally nutrients can be classified on 2 criteria: depending on the quantities present, or on their importance.

 Depending on the quantity, we can have:   

• Macronutrients.

The name suggests they represent most of the mass of any food. They are:

- protein

- fat

- carbohydrate

- fiber.


These are usually the things you see when you’re reading a food label. They are known for the fact that they provide energy. Fiber is an exception to this rule, although, structural speaking, it can be considered a carbohydrate. Some people consider fiber as a non-nutrient along with water but such details are irrelevant for the moment.

• Micronutrients.

As an opposite, micronutrients are found in small amounts. This category contains vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals. They don’t provide calories but they participate in most of your body’s functions enabling the production of enzymes, hormones and other substances essential for proper growth and development. As tiny as the amounts are, however, the consequences of their absence are severe. Iodine, vitamin A and iron are responsible for most of health problems in low income countries.

Depending on their importance nutrients can be essential or nonessential. You’ll often hear these when talking about amino or fatty acids and they show if that component can be produced internally or must be obtained from your diet. This doesn’t mean that you must neglect everything that’s nonessential. As you shall later see, nutritional equilibrium, and food diversity are always the best approaches.

I’m sure you’ve heard the expression that someone has a slow metabolism. So what is this metabolism? I’m sure most of the people think metabolism means the digestion of food. That’s just part of the truth… Metabolism can be defined as the sum of all the chemical reactions that take place in our body. These reactions can have 2 kinds of results: the construction or break down of organic matter. The first form is called anabolism and the second catabolism. Digestion is a form of catabolism because it has the role of breaking down food into nutrients, and nutrients into their smaller components amino acids, fatty acids, sugars etc.

This should help you begin to understand how things work. As we’ll look closer at all the nutrients, things will become clearer and you will be able to understand why certain food choices are better than others.

Posted in: Nutrition