The Necessary Building Blocks Of Diet
June 7, 2009 by Diane B Collins
Filed under Diet
The normal individual can get quite befuddled when it comes to diet. We have all hear about vitamins and minerals, carbohydrates and sugars, antioxidants and fiber but how do they all fit together?
The critical building blocks of food are the macronutrients. We all need a undeniable quantity of macronutrients to stay alive. While there are people who concentrate on one macronutrient over another the healthiest diets include a good balance of all three macronutrients.
The macronutrients are fat, protein and carbohydrates. They provide the calories our bodies need to endure. Carbohydrates and protein provide 4 calories per gram while fat provides 9 calories per gram. A calories is the measurement of the energy contents of food and it is in effect the sum of heat energy necessary to raise the temperature of 1g of water 1 degree Celsius.
Due to the surplus calories in fat it was long believed that the additional fat that we ate was the key reason of the additional fat on our bodies. It turned out that this rationalization was very simplistic. The fat on our bodies is caused by a number of diverse factors including the eating of too many total calories be they from fat, carbohydrates or protein.
Protein is the building blocks of the tissues in our bodies and it is fundamental to all of the processes within our cells. Protein can be found in animal tissue, dairy products and eggs but also vegetarian sources such a beans, legumes and specially soybeans.
Carbohydrates are the chief energy source of our bodies. A basic clarification of carbohydrates is that they change to sugar in our bodies, which in turn provides the energy that we need. Carbohydrates can be further broken down into simple carbohydrates, which include sugar, candy, white flour and more and complex carbohydrates, which include whole grains and vegetables. Simple carbohydrates break down in our bodies at a very hasty level, causing energy swings and increased hunger while complex carbohydrates break down slowly which gives us continued longer-term energy.
Fat has long been the most misaligned of the three macronutrients. However fat is critical for our bodies. There are bad fats and good fats. The bad fats are the saturated fats from animal products and the “fake” fats or the trans fats that are created by hydrogenation. The good fats or the healthy fats are the monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats such as those found in olive oil, peanut oil and canola oil and also the fat that is found in nuts and seeds, avocados, olives and the acai berry.
The macronutrients of protein, carbohydrates and fat are the construction blocks of food and all of the rest of the helpful nutritional factors, like vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and more are found within one of these three macronutrients.
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