Alcohol and Nutrition :: Health Nutrition Pyramid Diet

Alcohol and NutritionNutrition is a course that has dickens purposes to provide push button and to maintain torso structure and function. Food supplies heftiness and provides the building blocks needed to replace worn or disparaged cells and the nutritionary components needed for body function. Alcoholics ofttimes eat poorly, limiting their supply of requirement nutrients and affecting both energy supply and structure maintenance.Once ingested, intellectual nourishment must be digested so it is available for energy and maintenance of body structure and function. Alcohol inhibits the breakdown of nutrients into usable molecules by decreasing secretion of digestive enzymes from the pancreas. Alcohol impairs nutrient absorption by damaging the cells lining the stomach and intestines and disabling transport of some nutrients into the blood. In addition, nutritional deficiencies themselves whitethorn lead to further absorption problems. For example, foliate deficiency alters the cells lining the vitiated intestine, which in turn impairs absorption of water and nutrients including glucose, sodium, and additional foliate. Even if nutrients be digested and absorbed, alcohol can prevent them from being fully utilized by altering their transport, storage, and excretion. Decreased liver stores of vitamins such(prenominal) as vitamin A and change magnitude excretion of nutrients such as fat, indicate impaired utilization of nutrients by alcoholics. The three basic nutritional components found in food--carbohydrates, proteins, and fats--are used as energy after being converted to simpler products. Some alcoholics ingest as much as 50 percent of their total daily calories from alcohol, often neglecting important foods. Even when food intake is adequate, alcohol can damage the mechanisms by which the body controls blood glucose levels, resulting in either increased or decreased blood glucose (glucose is the bodys principal sugar. As a result, alcohol causes the idea and other body tissue to be deprived of glucose needed for energy and function. Although alcohol is an energy source, how the body processes and uses the energy from alcohol is more abstruse than can be explained by a simple calorie renewing value. For example, alcohol provides an average of 20 percent of the calories in the diet of the hurrying third of drinking Americans, and we might expect many drinkers who consume such amounts to be obese. Instead, national data indicate that, despite higher thermal intake, drinkers are no more obese than nondrinkers. Also, when alcohol is substituted for carbohydrates, calorie for calorie, subjects execute to lose weight, indicating that they derive less energy from alcohol than from food