Nutrition

Nutrition refers to the process of eating, digesting, and using food, and the study of this process, especially to determining an optimal diet for purposes of health, weight loss, body building, or other purposes.

There exists a large category of disease which are caused by malnutrition, or the lack of proper nutrition. These include :

• heart disease
• beriberi
• rickets
• scurvy
• vitamin deficiency disease
• kwashiorkor
• pellagra

Additionally, several diseases directly or indirectly are impacted by diet, or require very close attention to diet. These include

• metabolic or nutritionally related disease such as diabeties or hypothyroidism.
• various eating disorders such as binge eating, anorexia nervosa, or bulimia

Current dietary guidelines in the United States are presented in the concept of a food pyramid. Detailed information on general nutrition is available at the Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Information Center, at http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/.

Some concepts in nutrition include these need to be filled out

• calorie
• vitamins and minerals
• proteins
• fats
  • saturated fat
• carbohydrates
  • sugars
  • starches
• cholesterol
  • "good" cholesterol (hdl cholesterol)
  • "bad" cholesterol (ldl cholesterol)

Controversies in modern nutrition include:

• The current disparity in food availability between first and third world populations, see famine and poverty
• How large a place dairy products should take in the food pyramid
• How much meat and animal products is appropriate in diet, see also vegetarian and vegan
• Should genetic engineering be used the production of food crops and animals
• Are the use of pesticides, and fertilizers damaging to the foods produced by use of these methods, see also organic farming

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