What is Nutrition

What is nutrition? And why is nutrition important?

Like the man who defined love as “not beating your wife,” nutrition is as much a matter of what not to do as what is proper.

Nutrition is the science of keeping the body adequately fueled with the correct foods.

Although eating should also entail the idea of pleasure, the chief importance of food is to keep the body cells healthy.  A cell cannot distinguish whether the protein it receives came from filet mignon or from beef stew; neither can the cell appreciate the gastronomic artistry of a four-layer cake piled high with frosting.  In fact, if the cell could speak our language, it would probably shout, “For your health’s sake, stop choking me with all those sugars and starches and send me more protein it’s not carbohydrates that make me happy, its amino acids!”

Because our cells were created in the knowledge of the “do’s and don’ts” of good nutrition, it is about time some basis of understand­ing is reached between the mind that selects and prepares the food and the cell for whom the food is intended.  Most of us would have nothing but the most genuine compassion for a young infant before whom an ignorant mother would place a meal of ham, fried potatoes and strong coffee.  Yet the things we do to our cells nutritionally make this gross ignorance look humane by comparison!

Proper nutrition is not as dreary a prospect as defined by one teen-ager to another.  “Nutrition,” said the all-know­ing adolescent, “means giving up everything you like—sodas and hot dogs and stuff—and poking down spinach and carrots.”

On the contrary, nutrition can be a fascinating study.  And cer­tainly it should be one of prime interest to everyone, since it is so personal.  No one can eat for you; that is one function each one of us must perform for himself.  Although we may have to depend upon other people to grow our food and to cook it, getting that food to the body cells—its ultimate goal—is something no one else can do for us.  That is why it behooves everyone to have at least an elementary knowledge of what is nutrition, and I mean good nutrition.  Eating is far more than grabbing a bite to quiet a growling stomach.  Like everything else, nutrition has its commonsense side.
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Would you like understand the best way understand what is nutrition and why nutrition is so important?

In my free eBook: “Nutrition in a Nutshell”, you will find the best way to simplify a complex subject is to introduce it to you through its chief characters.

Briefly, these are proteins (amino acids), carbohydrates (sugars and starches) and fats which, in turn, reduce to vitamins and minerals.

Water, too, is an important element of nutrition, although you may be accustomed to thinking of it as merely something to appease thirst, or to fill a bathtub!