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Category
Nutrition
Summary
Nutrition is the biochemical and physiological process by which an organism uses food to support its life. It provides organisms with nutrients, which can be metabolized to create energy and chemical structures. Failure to obtain sufficient nutrients causes malnutrition. Nutritional science is the study of nutrition, though it typically emphasizes human nutrition.
The type of organism determines what nutrients it needs and how it obtains them. Organisms obtain nutrients by consuming organic matter, consuming inorganic matter, absorbing light, or some combination of these. Some can produce nutrients internally by consuming basic elements, while some must consume other organisms to obtain pre-existing nutrients. All forms of life require carbon, energy, and water as well as various other molecules. Animals require complex nutrients such as carbohydrates, lipids, and proteins, obtaining them by consuming other organisms. Humans have developed agriculture and cooking to replace foraging and advance human nutrition. Plants acquire nutrients through the soil and the atmosphere. Fungi absorb nutrients around them by breaking them down and absorbing them through the mycelium.
Nutritional science
Scientific analysis of food and nutrients began during the chemical revolution in the late-18th century. Chemists in the 18th and 19th centuries experimented with different elements and food sources to develop theories of nutrition. Modern nutrition science began in the 1910s as individual micronutrients began to be identified. The first vitamin to be chemically identified was thiamine in 1926, and vitamin C was first to be found as a protection against scurvy in 1932. The role of vitamins in nutrition was studied in the following decades. The first recommended dietary allowances for humans were developed in fear of disease caused by food deficiencies around the time of the Great Depression and second world war. Due to its importance in human health, the study of nutrition has heavily emphasized human nutrition and agriculture, while ecology is a secondary concern.
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