Nutrition is the science of understanding how the body uses the nutrients found in food. It involves studying the relationship between diet, health, and disease. Nutritionists use insights from molecular biology, biochemistry, and genetics to understand how nutrients affect the human body. Nutrients are the individual substances in food that humans and animals need to live and grow.
Examples of nutrients include proteins, fats, carbohydrates (sugars, dietary fiber), vitamins, and minerals. Nutrients are essential for the human body to function properly and sustain life. They provide energy to perform daily tasks and are necessary for growth, restoration, and health. Nutrition is the study of nutrients and the branch of science that involves nutrients and nutrition. It is the general process in which the body collects enough food and water to function properly and maintain sustainability. The relationship between a balanced diet, health, well-being, and illness is observed in nutrition.
Lack of sufficient nutrients causes malnutrition. Nutritional science is the study of nutrition, although it usually emphasizes human nutrition. It is how food affects the health of the body. Foods are made up of macronutrients including proteins, carbohydrates, and fats which not only offer calories to fuel the body and give it energy but also play specific roles in maintaining health. Foods also provide micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) and phytochemicals that don't provide calories but serve a variety of critical functions to ensure the body functions optimally. Prokaryotes, including bacteria and archaea, vary greatly in the way they obtain nutrients in all nutritional groups.
Mineral cycles include the carbon cycle, sulfur cycle, nitrogen cycle, water cycle, phosphorus cycle, oxygen cycle among others which are continuously recycled together with other mineral nutrients in productive ecological nutrition. Nutritional transition refers to the change from traditional to modern diet along with an increase in sedentary behavior which occurs along with modernization. The three types of heterotrophs are holozoic nutrition, parasitic nutrition, and saprophytic nutrition. Specialty pet food has been manufactured since 1860 and subsequent research and development has addressed the nutritional needs of pets. The use of cells from both experimental animals and human donors can also highlight species-specific differences affecting nutrition. The importance of the entire diet consumed as a standard practice is being recognized and an increasing number of studies are analyzing the dietary pattern to identify possible causes of malnutrition and overnutrition. Nutritional transition which includes a shift from consumption from traditional diets to modern diets with high energy density and low nutrient diversity is associated with acquired metabolic syndromes. Both newborns and nursing homes can suffer from a multitude of problems; this is because sometimes even if someone eats what should be enough for proper nutrition their body does not absorb enough.
To address the complicated metabolic disorders that result from overnutrition and suboptimal nutrition multiple approaches are needed using a variety of experimental systems targeting various levels of biological organization. Grain cultivation and bread production have been a key component of human nutrition since the beginning of agriculture. Recent advances in high-throughput analysis creation of animal models of human metabolic diseases and bioinformatics tools promise to accelerate the process of formulating more effective nutritional recommendations.
