Macronutrients And Nutrition

Macronutrients, vitamins, and minerals are essential to our every day lives. Our body is like a car that is dependent on fuel or gasoline. Our body is dependent on macronutrient and micronutrients, which fuel a person’s body. Vitamins and minerals are in the category of micronutrients (Hathcock, 1997). Everyday our body runs out of fuel and so we need to eat more macro- and micro-nutrients. Also, eating too many nutrients can be hurtful to your body. Like a car, too much gasoline can ruin the engine and kill the car. Overdosing on nutrients can lead to serious problems like scurvy, kidney stones, and sometimes even death (Hathcock, 1997). Macronutrients, vitamins, and minerals are essential parts of living. Macronutrients are classified as carbohydrates, proteins, lipids, and water (McGuire & Beerman, 2013). There are many types of carbohydrates, but the most important one is glucose, which will is blood sugar (McGuire & Beerman, 2013). Glucose is used for energy and other carbohydrates are used to make up a person’s genetic material (better known as DNA), or they are used maintain the health of a person’s digestive tract (McGuire & Beerman, 2013). If one alters the level of one type of macronutrient, this will affect the proportion of the other macronutrients a person …show more content…
Calcium helps with the structural components in a person’s body such as the bones (Hathcock, 1997). Sodium helps regulate different body processes like water balance (McGuire & Beerman, 2013). Selenium facilitates chemical reactions, reduces the risk of stomach cancer mortatlity, total mortality, and total cancer mortality (Hathcock, 1997). Others like chromium will help decrease some forms of lung disease including lung cancer (Hathcock, 1997). Minerals do not work the same way vitamins do energy wise. Minerals will drive energy-producing reactions that involve macronutrients (McGuire & Beerman,