chapter7

Lecture Notes

One thing that's missing from the definition that we just covered from the American Medical Association are the factors that affect the choices that we make about the food that we put into our bodies. So eating allows us to supply our bodies with the fuel needed to sustain life and carry out our daily activities, but eating is not a simple behavior, and in fact, it's quite complex. There are many reasons that we eat. And we eat in many different situations, so it's quite common behavior.

And you can see pictures on this slide of many different situations in which we eat. So, on the bottom right you can see a school cafeteria of trays. When you're growing up as a kid you're eating in the cafeteria. There's a holiday meal picture. The type of cultural setting certainly can affect the foods that you eat, the choices you make about your food. You can see there are examples of extreme eating—the hot dog contest featured here on the picture on the slide and also celebrations—like birthdays, weddings—things where we celebrate we often make different choices about our food. So, eating is something that is affected in the choices we make when we're eating, something that's affected by personal, social, and cultural factors.

And so in this lecture we'll talk about the essential nutrients and the role they play in our bodies, but we're also going to talk about eating because, ultimately, that's how we fuel our body and get the nutrition that we need.