The Function of Foods
Source: Nutrition and National Health Robert McCarrison, 1936.
Bee’s Note: I’ve taken the liberty of changing some words so you will understand this better.
The Function of Foods Are:
- To rebuild living tissues.
- To supply energy.
- To preserve a proper environment in the body in which the biochemical processes [metabolism] of the body can take place – see Note.
Note: Metabolism and metabolic processes are all of the chemical processes of living cells that:
- Change foods into forms that are useable by the body, i.e. proteins into amino acids, carbs into glucose, and fats into fatty acids.
- Produce energy.
- Do repairs.
- Regenerate cells.
- Detoxify and eliminate waste products from digestion, respiration (oxygen), and cells.
It follows that derangements of nutrition — and, therefore, of health — must result if the food consumed fails to adequately serve these functions.
Then living tissues becomes imperfect [and dis-eased]; transformation of energy in the body becomes deranged; and, metabolic processes become disordered, with the consequent production of abnormal toxins that the body becomes unable to detoxify.
The failure of food to subserve these functions may be brought about in a number of ways; but the one which chiefly concerns us here is the insufficient provision in the diet of one or other or all of its essentials: suitable protein, inorganic salts (minerals) and vitamins — [Bee adds one more, which is suitable fats].
Foods which are unsatisfactory result in sub-optimal, or to subnormal states of health, or even to actual dis-ease, the kind and severity of which depend upon the nature and degree of lack of proper food and the length of time the organism has been subjected to their influence.