The Crucial Building Blocks Of Nourishment

Food can be a bewildering matter for the ordinary individual. Of course we have all heard about vitamins and minerals, antioxidants and fiber, complex carbohydrates and sugars but how does it all fit together?

The macronutrients of protein, fat and carbohydrates are the critical building blocks of all nutrition. We all require macronutrients to continue to exist. There are people who may favor one of another of the macronutrients but a beneficial, balanced diet has a good mix of all three.

The macronutrients are protein, fat and carbohydrates. Protein and carbohydrates both provide 4 calories per gram, while the more dense fat contains 9 calories per gram. A calorie is at its most principal description the total of heat energy mandatory to raise the temperature of 1g of water 1 degree Celsius. While that is a somewhat bewildering description for most of us it is easier for us to just know that a calorie is just a measurement that we employ to conclude the energy content of food.

Because fat has more calories per gram than protein and carbohydrates it was long assumed that it must be the culprit behind the fat on our bodies. However, this reason proved to be way too naive. Fat on our bodies is caused by a number of different factors including eating too many total calories whether they are from fat or from protein and carbohydrates.

Protein is the most important of the three macronutrients because it is the building block of all of the tissues in our bodies. Protein can be found in meat and fish, dairy products and eggs and some excellent vegetarian sources such as beans and legumes and soybeans.

Carbohydrates are the main energy source of our bodies. A basic explanation of carbohydrates is that they convert 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 essential 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 formed 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.