We eat food. Our bodies breaks this down to as small as a common denominator with our cells through digestion (chewing, stomach and intestines).
Went then absorb 3 main components, sugars, amino acids and fats?
Fats are sent through the lymphatic system and not screened by the liver as sugars and amino acids are. Which are then both sent straight to our heart and pumped around our body to be ‘burned’ with oxygen to give our cells energy.
Fibre in this process slows down digestion in the small and large intestine (mostly small) which helps slow the release of the food we eat.
So at a fundamental level, it doesn’t matter what we eat, except for minerals and micronutrients? The sugar from broccoli is the same as the sugar from honey? (Carbs being a chain of sugars)
Very new to this topic, have studied business throughout school and forgot about biology. Realise many bits here may be an oversimplification from the books I’ve read. Is there anywhere here you find interesting where I could delve deeper to give a more complete understanding of the process?
Short and medium chain fats bypass the lymphatic system, going directly to the liver.
Soluble fiber, long chain fats, and protein slow digestion. Insoluble fiber may increase the rate of food moving through the colon and may inhibit fat and cholesterol absorption in a dose-dependent relationship by binding to bile salts.
Foods have different GI values. Broccoli is very low, like a 10. Honey is around 58 GI.
Uhm. I’d suggest your local library. There’s also online courses, like Khan academy.
Macronutrient and micronutrient physiology can be extremely complex. I don’t have a specific recommendation but an introductory nutrition textbook would probably be a good start to understanding some of the complex mechanisms of nutrients
Edit: khan academy on YouTube has great “nutrition” content on many topics related to the ones you have mentioned in your post
dont assume current “science” already figured out everything about the human body. If we assume that, then yes, we could have a handful of pills that cover nutritional needs and that would be it.
Also dont assume what you are being told is “basic nutritional need” is actually accurate.
yes we live by guidelines, and these are defined by simplifying stuff but there are a lot of extra considerations inbetween.
a carb is a carb but try to eat the equivalent of a can of soda in broccoli carbs…. 100g of broccoli have 6.64g of carbs…. you will need to eat 587 g of broccoli to match that.
one more thing… yes there are essential amino acids, fats are also needed to subsist but technically speaking you dont need any carb.