A Primer on Nutrition Part 1

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In many articles on the site, I go into a rather great deal of detail on various aspects of human nutrition and the various
nutrients that comprise it. However, I find that it’s often exceedingly useful to go back to basics and discuss the
fundamentals (this applies to all topics, not just nutrition). Where appropriate, I’ll point readers to other articles on the
site (or my books) which discuss a given topic in more detail than I want to cover here.

To keep the piece manageable, I’m going to divide it into two parts with Part 2 being run on Thursday. Today I want to
look at the issue of essential vs. non- essential nutrients as well as protein and carbohydrates. On Thursday, I’ll tackle
the issue of dietary fats along with everything else (fiber, alcohol, vitamins and minerals).

Essent ial vs. Non- essent ial Nut rient s

The body has a requirement for somewhere around 60 nutrients on a daily basis for normal functioning. Please note: as
nutritional science has progressed, it’s now become apparent that many, many more nutrients may contribute to optimal
health, although they are not necessarily required for survival. Put differently, you can live without consuming them but
you might be healthier or perform better if you did eat them.

I should also mention that this list of 60 nutrients includes things such as air and water that, while they aren’t considered
as nutrients per se, are usually not an issue. Put differently, if you’re having issues obtaining adequate amounts of air or
water, you have bigger problems to deal with.

Of more relevance to today’s article, nutritional science often groups nutrients into the categories of essential and
nonessential (recently the terms indispensable and dispensable have come into vogue) which is what I’d like to discuss
next. For quick summary, there are roughly 8 essential amino acids, 2 essential fatty acids, a host of vitamins and
minerals and a few others substances that are required on a daily basis. You might note that carbohydrates were not
listed as an essential nutrient, a topic I’ll come back to below.

So what is an essential nutrient as opposed to a non- essential nutrient? I’m actually going to answer that by explaining
what a non- essential nutrient is first. Contrary to what it sounds like, the term non- essential (or dispensable) doesn’t
mean that the nutrient isn’t essential for life; rather, it’s not essential that the nutrient be obtained from the diet itself.

Translating that into English, there are some nutrients (such as glucose, certain fatty acids and just over half of the amino
acids) that can be made in the body from other sources. For example, many amino acids can be made in the body via
metabolism from other amino acids; as well, glucose can be made in the body from a number of different substances.
So while these nutrients are essential for life and survival, it is not essential that they be obtained from the diet.

At the same time, there are nutrients that cannot be made by the body (the vitamins and minerals are examples, so are
the essential fatty acids and roughly the other half of the amino acids) and are hence considered essential nutrients.
That is, it is essential that they be obtained from the diet (generally on a daily basis).

In short, to be considered essential, a nutrient must meet two primary criteria:

1. That nutrient is required for survival

2. That nutrient cannot be made in sufficient quantities (or at all) by the body

So if a nutrient isn’t required to keep you alive, it’s not essential (even if consuming it improves health or what have
you). If it’s required for life but the body can make sufficient amounts of it, it’s still not essential to get it from the diet;
hence it is not an essential nutrient. Only when a given nutrient is both required for survival and can’t be made in the
body in sufficient amounts is it an essential nutrient in terms of what I’m talking about here.

Although I want to keep this piece focused on the basics, I should probably mention one odd exception which is Vitamin
D (currently getting a lot of press, and for good reason, in various places). Vitamins and minerals, generally, can’t be
made in the body and must come from the diet. But while Vitamin D can be obtained from the diet (many foods are
fortified with it), and is an essential nutrient, it is actually made by the body in response to sunlight hitting the skin.
I want to make it clear that the above is a bit of a simplification and the topic of essential and non- essential nutrients can
be made considerably more complicated. For example, some nutrients can be considered conditionally essential.
That is, under normal conditions, the body may make plenty of a given nutrient (meaning that it is not required that the
nutrient come from the diet) but under other conditions the body needs more than it can make. Under those conditions
(usually involving things like disease and severe trauma), a nutrient that is normally non- essential becomes essential
(must be obtained from the diet). Hence conditionally essential.

Prot ein

The word protein come from a Greek word meaning “the first” which is meant to signify its primary role in human
nutrition. While you can survive rather extended periods without carbohydrate or fats in the diet, a long- term lack of
protein intake leads to a loss of body tissue (muscle and organ protein), function and eventually death.

Whole dietary proteins are made up of smaller units called amino acids of which ~ 20 occur in the diet (there are many
more that occur in the body). Of those 20 or so amino acids, roughly eight are considered essential meaning that they
must come from the diet on a daily basis. Under certain conditions, such as stress and trauma, some amino acids also
become conditionally essential; glutamine is perhaps the most commonly cited example with much higher amounts that
can be made in the body being required under those kinds of conditions. There are other examples but few would be
relevant outside of some very very specific situations (usually involving severe malnutrition or disease).

A primary distinction between protein and carbohydrate/fat is that only protein contains dietary nitrogen (which is
technically an essential nutrient). Since humans can’t ‘fix’ nitrogen from the air like plants, we have to obtain it from the
diet. And that nitrogen is found in the individual amino acids that make up whole food proteins. Also, while there can be
some interconversion of protein (more accurately, amino acids) to carbs or fat (this last one is very rare), neither carbs
nor fat can be made into amino acids.

Proteins/amino acids have a number of crucial roles in the human body but most of them are structural (meaning the
protein is used to build things). Many hormones are made of protein (some examples are IGF- 1 and Growth Hormone),
your organs, muscles, skin and hair all contain protein; protein has numerous other roles in the body as well. Protein
can also be used to produce energy in the body, usually by conversion to other nutrients (almost always glucose). For
example, during long- term aerobic exercise, the breakdown of amino acids (specifically leucine) can provide 5- 10% of
the total energy generated.

Something to note is that, in contrast to carbohydrate (which is stored in both muscle and liver) and fat (which is stored
on your butt and stomach), there is no real storage form of protein unless you count the relatively small amount floating
around in the bloodstream and the protein that makes up your muscles and organs. But this isn’t a true storage form like
for carbohydrates and fats since, in general, breaking down body protein is a bad thing (as I mentioned above).

In the diet, protein is found to some degree in almost all foods with the exception of pure fats like vegetable oils and
such and some totally refined carbohydrates such as candy (e.g. jelly beans). Fruits and vegetables contain fairly small
amounts of protein (perhaps a gram or two per serving) while beans and nuts can contain significant amounts of protein.
But most people in modern society get their protein from animal based products: meat (red meat, chicken, fish), milk,
cheeses, etc.

In terms of caloric content, protein has traditionally been assigned a value of 4 kilocalories/gram (~ 16.8 kj/g) but this is
currently a topic of some debate. Because of how it is digested and assimilated in the body, at least one researcher is
suggesting strongly that protein be given a lower caloric value (roughly 3.2 kcal/g or 13 kj/g) than the traditional value.

I covered a great deal of detail regarding different dietary proteins on the site in What’s Are Good Sources of Protein; of
course The Protein Book also discusses this topic in detail.

Carbohydrat e

The term carbohydrate refers to a number of different organic compounds ranging from simple sugars (e.g. glucose and
fructose) to disaccharides (e.g. sucrose, lactose) all the way up to starches (long chains of individual carbohydrate
molecules bound together). Because of it’s chemical structure, you will often see carbohydrate abbreviated as CHO
(for carbon, hydrogen, oxygen).
In the body, carbohydrate’s role is primarily energetic, that is it provides energy (through breakdown) in various tissues
of the body. Most tissues in the body can use glucose for fuel and, quite in fact, most will use glucose if it is available
(they will switch to using fats or ketones if glucose is not available in sufficient amounts). A few tissues of the body can
only use glucose for fuel.

And while the above might suggest that dietary carbohydrates are essential, this isn’t the case. Recall from the
discussion above that, to be considered essential a nutrient must not only be required by the body but cannot be made
in sufficient quantities. And, as I’ve also discussed elsewhere, the body is able to produce some carbohydrate from the
breakdown of other nutrients, specifically about half of the amino acids, glycerol (the backbone of both dietary and body
fat) and lactate.

In general this process (called gluconeogenesis which simply means the production of new glucose) is able to cover
the body’s basic daily needs. As well, with low- carbohydrate diets, there is a whole body shift in fuel use from carbs to
fats and ketones which reduces carbohydrate requirements. This is discussed to some degree in nearly all of my
books but the greatest detail can be found in The Ketogenic Diet.

I would finish by noting that high- intensity exercise tends to increase carbohydrate requirements beyond what the body
can make putting carbohydrates into the conditionally essential category I discussed above (e.g. the body needs more
than it can produce itself). For those individuals who wish to perform high- intensity activity such as intensive weight
training or even high intensity metabolic work, some amount of carbohydrates generally becomes required in the diet.
The issue of daily carbohdyrate requirements is discussed in much more detail in How Many Carbohydrates Do You
Need?

Carbohydrates can be stored within the body in the liver or muscle as glycogen (a long chain of glucose molecules
bonded to each other) and is found in small amounts (~ 5- 10 grams total) as free glucose in the bloodstream. Liver
glycogen exists primarily to help maintain blood glucose levels while glycogen within skeletal muscle can only be used
by the muscle that it’s stored in; it can’t be released back into the bloodstream.

Dietarily, traditionally carbohydrates have been divided somewhat simply into two major categories (this is especially
true in athletic subcultures but is often used generally) which are fibrous and starchy. Please note that this is mainly a
division of convenience but it tends to be useful practically so I’ll stick with it.

Fibrous carbohydrates generally refers to vegetables which, with a few exceptions, tend to contain very small amounts
of digestible carbohydrate while containing a lot of fiber. Pretty much any vegetable you care to name (with the handful
of exceptions mentioned next) will fall into this category of carbohydrates and it’s often stated that you can eat these
types of carbohyrates ‘without limit’ due to their generally low caloric content. I’ll come back to this shortly.

Starchy carbohydrates are, more or less, everything else: breads, pasta, rice, and grains, basically any carbohydrate
that contains a good bit of digestible carbohydrate. I should note that there are a few starchy vegetables such as
carrots, peas, corn and potatoes: vegetables which contain larger amount of digestible carbohydrate and which need to
be counted as starches in terms of real- world meal planning. Fruits, while not technically a starch, are usually grouped
with starches since they contain quite a bit of digestible carbohydrate (the majority of which are simple sugars).

Explaining the caloric value of carbohydrates can be somewhat confusing. Starchy carbohydrates are generally
assigned an average value of 4 calories per gram (16 kj/g) although this can vary slightly from food to food. Fiber is
where it gets more confusing; as I recently discussed in Fiber – It’s Nature’s Broom, some types of fiber can be broken
down to other things in the intestine and, recently, fiber has been given a caloric value of 1.5- 2 kcal/g (~ 6.3- 8.4 kj/g).
While this isn’t a large amount given most people’s average fiber intake, for people who are eating enormous amounts
of vegetables (which don’t just contain fiber, mind you), the calories can start to add up.

And with those topics covered, I’ll stop here for today. On Thursday, I’ll take another quick look at dietary fats along with
the ‘everything else’ category of human nutrition: alcohol, vitamins, minerals and fiber (again).