Should We Eat & Drink or Should We Not Eat & Drink?
You probably know the feeling that you are hungry and want to eat something. When your mouth is dry, you want to quench your thirst. With hunger and thirst, your body shows you that it needs food and fluids. Everyone has to eat and drink. A person cannot survive without food and drink.
The body needs the energy to play, think, work, and even sleep. He gets this energy from the nutrients that the food contains. The most important nutrients are sugar and starch referred to as carbohydrates, fats and proteins, vitamins, and minerals. All of these nutrients are necessary for muscles, the brain, organs to grow and work.
The foods that make up the main part of the diet are called staple foods. These include, for example, wheat, rye, rice, corn, potatoes, lentils, yams, fish, meat, milk, and eggs. The staple foods are different in the countries of the world.
Importance of Eating
The nutrients carbohydrates, proteins, and fats as well as vitamins, minerals, and water have many different functions in the body. They supply the body with essential substances every day, provide energy and ideally keep the human body healthy and fit. If the food is optimal, it supplies all the nutrients a person needs.
The human body consists of many tiny building blocks, the cells. They need certain nutrients to survive. They get it through the food we eat. To do this, what we eat must first be broken down into its smallest components. It starts with chewing. The spit in the mouth begins with digestion. If the chewed pulp is swallowed, it continues in the stomach. With the help of the stomach acid, the pulp is mixed more and more. When the stomach contents reach the small intestine, they are already broken down into the components that the body cells need for their work, protein, carbohydrates, fat, vitamins, and minerals. The body can now bring these nutrients to the cells via the blood.
Building, dismantling, and remodeling processes are constantly taking place in the body. The body needs energy for these processes and the related functions like growth, maintenance of body temperature, breathing, or muscle work. This is ensured by the breakdown of certain nutrients such as carbohydrates, fats, protein.
Senses and Emotions
How something tastes, sour, salty, bitter, sweet is what humans perceive through the taste buds of the tongue. The taste buds on the edge of the taste buds are supplied by so-called sensory neurons, which transmit taste information to the brain and thereby trigger taste sensations. Sour, salty, sweet are perceived with varying degrees of sensitivity in almost all regions of the tongue. The bitter taste quality is mainly found at the back of the tongue, the base of the tongue.
What influences diet and eating habits?
Our eating habits are determined by our biography and culture, by the people we live with, environment, grocery stores, commercials, and other resources that are available such as time, money, and supply. The foundations for this are laid in childhood. Children learn from role models, what and how is eaten in their families is normal for them.
- Repetition influences nutritional socialization. If something new comes on the dining table like fruit or vegetables, this is often rejected at first. However, repeated offering, even in variations, can change preferences. Individual preferences also result from one's own culture. Among other things, this determines what is and what is not suitable food.
It is important that food not only fulfills the physiological function of quenching hunger or thirst. Rather, food also serves psychological stabilization and social integration. If, for example, food is used as a reward or punishment in childhood, this is saved by the child as a template. In this way, mechanisms can develop that link food to specific emotional needs.
- Socialization and social situation. If children find out that they can have a say in eating and if they see adult role models in the consumption of vegetables or fruit, then in later life they are better able to eat a varied or healthy diet product. This applies to both the amount they eat and the food itself. Strong regulations, on the other hand, tend to have a negative effect.
The social environment has an impact on consumer behavior, especially in socially weaker groups. Questions quickly arise such as, which foods can we afford? can we afford fair trade or organic? Having little money available doesn't just mean having less room for maneuver when shopping. It also often means that people have less cooking skills and knowledge and less knowledge about healthy eating.
Should We Avoid Water?
Cells, the brain, and the bloodstream all need lots of water. When breathing, sweating, and using the toilet, the body excretes fluids. So it's no wonder humans must drink enough. When you are thirsty, your body shows you that it needs water.
Water has many different functions. It is contained in every body cell and all body fluids - for example in saliva, gastric juice, lymph, or in the blood. Among other things, water is necessary to maintain heat regulation. The transport of nutrients, metabolic end-products, and breathing gases depend on water.
Drink enough
The need for water differs and depends on various factors such as energy utilization, the ambient temperature and the composition of the food, the salt content of the food, and physical activity.
Water poisoning is very rare but can occur if the elimination capacity of the kidneys is overwhelmed. One possible consequence is the development of brain edema. The maximum amount of fluid that an adult can ingest over a long period is approximately ten liters. To suffer acute water poisoning, an adult would have to drink six liters of water within a short period. For infants, this risk threshold can be reached much more easily with 0.4 liters of water and for small children with 0.9 liters of water.
Results of excessive water intake:
- Water retention in the tissue
- Acceleration of the heartbeat
- Cramps
- Confusion
- Loss of consciousness and even coma
- Symptoms of a heart failure
- Difficulty breathing
Results of not enough water intake:Results of not enough water intake:
- Headache
- Dry mouth
- Accelerated heartbeat
- Increased body temperature
- Weight loss
- Thirst
- Circulatory collapse
- Decreased skin tension
- Swollen tongue
- Difficulty swallowing
- Constipation
- Severe limitation of physical and mental performance
- Thickened blood
- Muscle spasms
Severe water loss can lead to serious physical damage. Without replacing the liquid there is a risk of death. Substances that are normally excreted in the urine can no longer be adequately eliminated by the organism after two to four days.
The need for fluid is increased, for example, during physical exertion, during sport, at high or very low temperatures, and during fever, vomiting, and diarrhea. The body also needs more fluids during pregnancy and breastfeeding, and more should be drunk.
A balanced diet is an important cornerstone of health and wellbeing. Ideally, we eat what our body needs and thereby provide it with the necessary nutrients. Why we eat, what, when, how much, and how we eat - all of this is influenced by many factors, such as perceptions and feelings. But several social and psychological aspects also play an important role.
