UNDERSTANDING FOOD

DEPARTMENT OF CONSUMER SCIENCE: FOOD AND NUTRITION




NUTRITION 1: ENUT 1P0

Compiled by: Mrs. L. van Heerden
Lecturer: Mr. L. Stemele


1.1 Introduction:.....................................................................................................................2
1.3 The Diet and Health Connection......................................................................................3

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, 1.4 Communicable disease.....................................................................................................4
1.5 Non-communicable disease (Chronic disease)................................................................4
1.6 Factors that can influence food choices to support good health:...................................5
1.7 NUTRIENTS.......................................................................................................................7
1.8 MALNUTRITION..............................................................................................................10
1.9 CAUSES OF MALNUTRITION...........................................................................................10
1.10 Symptoms of malnutrition in adults.............................................................................11
1.11 Symptoms of malnutrition in children.........................................................................12
1.12 Symptoms of a lack of vitamins....................................................................................13
1.13 Treatment of malnutrition at home.............................................................................13
1.14 Treatment of malnutrition at the hospital...................................................................14
1.15 Treatment of malnutrition for those who are unable to take food by mouth............14
1.16 Treatment of malnutrition in pregnant women..........................................................14
1.17 Treatment of malnutrition in children.........................................................................14
1.18 Prevention of malnutrition...........................................................................................15


MODULE 1: NUTRITION INFORMATION AND NUTRITIONAL
STATUS

Knowledge outcomes
After completion of this theme, the learner should be able to describe:
- What is nutrition and nutrients
- What nutrients does
- What effect insufficient nutrient intake has
- What factors influence food choices
- What is malnutrition?
- Cause of malnutrition
- Prevention of malnutrition

Skills outcomes
After completion of this theme, the learner should be able to:
- critically analyse the difference between under nutrition and over
nutrition;

1.1 Introduction:
If you care about your body, and if you have strong feelings about food
then you have much to gain from learning about NUTRITION. As
consumers we are bombarded on a daily basis by the internet,
newspapers, magazines, television and advertisements about stories of
new findings on nutrition and heart health or nutrition and cancer

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, prevention. Have you ever asked yourself the following question when you
eat something “Is this food good for me?” When you study nutrition, you
learn which food is best for you, and you can work out ways of choosing
foods, planning meals, and designing your diet wisely.

1.2 Important terms used in nutrition:

Nutrition:
It is the science of foods and nutrients and other chemical components
and their actions and interactions in the body, e.g. ingestion, digestion,
absorption, transport, metabolism and excretion.
Food:
Products obtained from animal or plants that can be taken into the body
to yield energy and nutrients for the maintenance of life and growth and
to repair tissue.
Diet:
All food (including beverages) a person usually eats and drinks.

1.3 The Diet and Health Connection
Your choice of diet affects your health, both today and in the future. Only
two common lifestyle habits are more influential: smoking and the use of
other forms of tobacco and drinking of alcohol in excess.

Before we move on to the main subject of this section let’s look first at the
whole issue of health and ill-health. Health is not simply the absence of
disease or of infirmity but has been defined as a state of complete
physical, mental and social well-being. The health of any group of people
is both a goal in itself and a key development input towards other goals.
This is because health contributes crucially to economic and social well-
being. More recently, health has not been seen in isolation but in
conjunction with human wealth and the lack of health therefore is viewed
alongside the issue of human poverty. This term refers to deprivation of
the means to achieve capabilities, for example, physical access to health
care in addition to the lack of basic factors that facilitate this achievement
such as social access to health care. Human development refers to
processes that enlarge people’s choices to enable them to achieve
capabilities, for example, the freedom to choose a healthy lifestyle and
the information with which to make a genuine informed choice about
one’s lifestyle (such as engaging with this program).
This more complex concept of poverty, wealth and development takes
account of the interactive processes that are crucial to the social
dynamics of health improvement; significantly, ill-health limits people’s
ability to earn higher incomes. When we discuss health, we are in fact
discussing how not to develop a disease or illness. Two types of disease
have been identified; those which are communicable and those which
have previously been known as non-communicable diseases, now more
often termed chronic diseases.


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