What is relation between nutrition and killer diseases?

What is Nutrition and what is a proper diet?

In all the previous posts I talked about the killer diseases and as a remedy for each diseases it is said that proper diet and physical activity is important. But what is proper diet? Everyone talks about proper diet and nutrition. But if we know the basics of this so called “nutrition” then wont it be easy to understand the word “Diet”? But nutrition is a vast subject and it can never be written in few paragraphs. So I decided to compile few and highlight the importance of nutrition in this blog.

We all have heard the old tamil sayings about nutrition here. That is “உணவே மருந்து” , அளவுக்கு மீறினால் அமுதமும் நஞ்சு” That is to say that "Food is medicine for all diseases and food can prevent any diseases too". Also "Nutrition is food but all foods are not nutrition" and if the food intake is excess or deficient in some nutrients then definitely it will bring troubles.

Good Nutrition is vital for health , disease prevention and is important for growth and development for small children and adults. Good nutrition is important to maintain our health. It is like fuel for cars. Without the fuel, cars can never run. Similarly without good nutrition our body cannot function well.So just like gasoline gives energy for car to run ,good nutriton gives energy for our body to run. This energy is measured in kilocalories or calories.

The nutrional requirements for each person varies depending upon age, sex, body height , body weight ,status of work and rate of growth. But average requirements for each nutrient for a person based on calorie is fixed by scientific community.

What is in food?

According to our body, the food is composed of many nutrients. Some nutrients are used for energy ( carbohydrates and fats) some are mainly for building materials ( proteins and minerals) and some other are for using or making the energy by process called metabolism and managing the chemical reactions in the body ( vitamins and fatty acids). Each body functions requires some energy to perform the actions and it is provided in calories by these nutrients. Thus the energy intake of food is burned off for bodily functions.

To operate at its best, the body needs these nutrients in the right amounts. So whether it is carbohydrate or protein or fat anything taken in excess than required and if not burned they get stored for later use. This will lead to weight gain and all health problems. Also if the food is deficient in some nutirents then the dysfuncitoning of body will occur. That is too much or too little can—and often does—result in the body dysfunctioning. That's what we know as disease. there are many numbers of researches done to support this relation of diet and killer diseases by scietific community.