Nutrition for Dummies – How does the body process the food you eat

Nutrition for Dummies – How does the body process the food you eat

Turning complex molecules into simple ones through the digestion allows us to survive and thrive, but how does this work? What happens when we eat something, and how does our body transform what we eat into actual “energy” that can be used by cells to sustain their functions?

The first steps of mechanical digestion

Chemical digestion: chewed, tore, ground into small pieces, mixed with saliva and acidified and pressed by the stomach until it turns into a liquid paste called chyme

Fats and proteins: storing energy and using it for building

While glucose is the main “fuel” used to produce energy, fats are mostly packed into small units called lipoproteins and then transported into various tissues (mostly the adipose one, or the body fat), where they are stored for later use.

Biochemistry for dummies: let’s get to the point

To explain all this process through a metaphor, try imagining ATP like actual electric energy.

The energy inside the human body: Adenosine Triphosphate and the Krebs Cycle

To keep our health, we need energy, and this energy is obtained through various pathways called metabolism.

REFERENCES

Kim E. Barrett, Fayez K. Ghishan, Juanita L. Merchant, Hamid M. Said, Jackie D. Wood.

How nutrients are transformed into energy after absorption

The three basic units in which all foods we eat are broken into are carbohydrates, fats and proteins, and together they constitute the macronutrients.

Source

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