BIOL 203 FUNDAMENTAL NUTRITION FINAL EXAM STUDY NOTES 1-11 CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY.
BIOL 203
Lesson 1:
Nutrition: How an organism acquired food and uses food to support all processes required for
its existence.
Plant Nutrition:
- Plants are anchored by roots to the ground
- They absorb nutrients from soil solution and directed upward toward leaves
- Developing leaf buds and flower buds pick up the bulk of the nutrients
- Together with photosynthesis, plant has all it needs to grow into tree towering
more than 30m high
Roundworm Nutrition:
- A biologist studying the nutrition of a roundworm for ex: Cetegans would be
interested in its locomotion during the time it is foraging for food
- Once food is located, worm biologist is interested in the type and rate of digestion
in each comportment of the worm’s elementary canal
- Next, biologist may question how the nutrients are absorbed, stored and
metabolized by the cells that make up the organism
- They also study the neurobiology of feeding in simpler animals like roundworms.
Roundworms are great model organisms because of their neurological simplicity
- Only 309 nerve cells make up the entire organism
Human Nutrition:
- The science of nutrition is the study of the nutrients and other substances in food
and the body’s handling of them
- It’s a young science
- More recently, it has a sister discipline called Nutritional Genomics: the science
for how nutrients affect gene expression
What is food?
- There are drawbacks to the advances made in the field of nutrition
- The science of nutrition is partly to blame for anyone of these being considered as
food: milkshakes, tarts, granola bars etc.
- Nutritionists broke down food into an amalgam of nutrients and offer the advice
that we need X amount of these nutrients every day
- Pop-tarts and protein shakes = not food
- Food is more than just a collection of vitamins, minerals and macronutrients
- Food and eating is a satisfy activity we engage in at least 3x per day
- Organs of the digestive system communicate with the brain and vice versa to
offer a feeling of wellness and satisfaction
- Food provides us with essential nutrients that must be supplied by the diet
because the human body cannot synthesize them. It can, but not in sufficient
quantities hence we eat food to get an adequate amount of the essential
nutrients to promote optimal health
- Absence of an essential nutrient would lead to a deficiency disease like scurvy
and eventual death
- It also matters the proportion of essential nutrients consumed
- Too much can lead to chronic diseases like cardio disease, type 2 diaebetes or
sudden death from overdosing on supplements
- Energy yielding nutrients = carbs, lipids, proteins
- Non-energy yield nutrients = vitamins, minerals, water
- Food also contains non-nutrients like fiber and phytochemicals, which starve off
chronic diseases