Food and Digestion

A balanced diet contains all the types of food the body needs, in just the right amounts
What is a balanced diet?
A diet that contains the correct amounts of all the necessary nutrients required for healthy growth and activity. Our diet must include five groups of food substances – carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, minerals and vitamins.

Food is essential for life. The nutrients obtained from are used in many different ways by the body. Here we are going to look at the different kinds of food is broken down by the different kinds of food by the digestive system and absorbed into the blood.
Three main reasons we need food for: * To supply us with a “fuel” for energy * To provide materials for growth and repair of tissues * To help fight disease and keep our bodies healthy.

Minerals
All the foods you have read about so far are made from just five chemical elements: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and sulphur. Our bodies contain many other elements which we get from our food. Some are present in large amounts in the body, for example calcium, which we used for making teeth and bones. Others are present in much smaller amounts, but still have essential jobs to do. For instance our bodies contain about 3g of iron, but without it our blood would not be able to carry oxygen.
If a person doesn’t get enough of a mineral from their diet, they will show the symptoms of a mineral deficiency disease. For example a one year old needs t consume about 0.6g (600mg) of calcium everyday to make the bones grow properly and harden. Anything less than this over a prolonged period could result in poor bone development. The bones will become deformed, resulting in a disease called rickets. Rickets can also be caused by lack of vitamin D in the diet.

Vitamin D * Rickets (Weak muscles,delayed tooth development, soft bones all caused