Fundamentals of Nutrition

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The fundamentals of nutrition are important to maintaining a healthy, balanced lifestyle. Human beings require certain levels of various substances, including vitamins and minerals. You are, in many ways, what you eat. The fundamentals of nutrition dictate that our nutrient levels have a direct bearing on our physical and mental health. It remains important to eat a variety from the four food groups.

In the film Elf, Buddy the Elf says that the four food groups are "candy, candy canes, candy corn, and syrup." Of course, every child realizes that such a diet would quickly lead to obesity and type 2 diabetes. Neither one of these conditions are optimal for a person's health. All nutritionists stress the importance of eating a well-balanced diet in order to provide the necessary nutrients required by the body. The fundamentals of nutrition dictate that the following are the most important bulk part of any diet:

• Carbohydrates
• Protein
• Lipids
• Water

These are the macronutrients.

Micronutrients, vitamins and minerals, are also essential to the fundamentals of nutrition. The human body is unable to produce these elements on their own, and they therefore must be obtained through the food we eat. A lack of Vitamin C, for example, will lead to the development of scurvy, a debilitating disease that often affected sailors on long voyages before the link between vitamins and health was established.

One of the most important aspects to raising a child into a healthy adult is good nutrition. Poor Nutrition will affect a child in many negative ways. Children start their habits young so we need to provide parents with the information to help them create a lifetime of good nutritional eating habits for our school aged children so they will in turn become healthy adults. Parents have a battle with the media today when it comes to healthy eating.

Many parents do not have the knowledge available to them to teach their children to make the right choices. Parents are also not aware of the importance of good nutrition and how to implement it into their children's diets everyday. Poor nutrition will not only affect the body image of a child but it effects their ability to learn and increases their chances of getting diseases such as diabetes, cancer and ADHD. In addition without the proper nutrition our children have a decrease in energy level which leads to a decrease in activity and then an increase in consumption of poor food choices. Children spend too many hours in front of the television, Internet and video games.

Parents today have to struggle against big business who are constantly striving for an increase in profits. The media and advertising is shaping the diets of our children. The television is bombarded with soda, fast food and sugary snack commercials. As parents we have to teach our children that these are not the best choices and learn to give them other appealing but healthy options. Parents are not aware of the harm the mass consumption of the sodas and junk food is doing to our children. We can make them aware of this and how too feed their children conveniently and still be healthy.

Our schools are also guilty in some poor choices being made by children. Often sodas and unhealthy snacks are offered for sale in the schools. The hot lunches seem to be competing with fast food. They are often nutritionally deficient and unhealthy choices for our growing children.

The parents are the most capable of having the most nutritional foods available to their family. Children learn their eating habits by watching what their parents are eating. Children eat what the parents are putting on the dinner table if they haven't already filled up on empty calories. The more informed the parents are the better choices they will be making and this will increase the nutritional value of our children's diets.

If the parents are given the proper nutritional education we can battle back against all of the media and its enticing choices our children are making too often. The parents will then choose not too buy the sodas, fast food and sugary snacks so they are not as readily available to the children. But in turn offer healthy alternatives. Parents today want to give their children what is best for them they just need a little help in knowing what is best when it comes to feeding these growing little adults.