Chapter 1

Healthy Living
Food and Digestion
 The food we eat

Why do we need food?

We need food for 3 reasons:
1. Energy for movement and to keep warm especially in winter.
2. Substances that the body needs to keep healthy.
3. The building blocks for growth and repair.

What is food?
Food can contain a mixture of nutrients. A nutrient is a substance needed by organisms to stay alive
and healthy. A healthy human diet involves seven different kinds of nutrients:

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 All the Nutrients
Carbohydrates
There are 2 types of carbohydrates:

and

Carbohydrates are important because they give us .

If eaten in excess, carbohydrates are stored as .

Examples of food containing carbohydrates:

Test for Starch

Add iodine to the food. If it changes colour from orange to blue-black then the
food contains starch.

Test for Sugar

Step 1: Mix small amount of each food sample with distilled water to make a test liquid.
Step 2: In a test tube, add some of liquid to be tested.
Step 3: Add drops of Benedict’s solution to each test tube. Carefully heat the test tubes by
suspending in a hot water bath at about 40-50 degrees for 5 minutes.
Step 4: Note any colour changes.

If it contains sugar, it changes colour from blue to green, yellow, orange or red. The redder the colour
the more sugar it contains.

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 Fats

Fats are a mixture of molecules called .

When such a mixture is solid at room temperature, it is called a .

When it is a liquid at room temperature, it is called an .

Examples of food containing fats:

Fats are a good source of energy in our bodies. One gram of fat has twice the energy value of one
gram of carbohydrate. Fats are also important for keeping us warm and to make nerve and brain
cells, and cell membranes.

Too much animal fat in the diet can result in high levels of cholesterol in our blood. This causes
arteries to become blocked and it can lead to angina and heart attacks.

Test for Fats

Rub a piece of the food on a filter paper.
Hold the paper up to the light.
If it goes translucent (allows light to pass through) the food contains fat.

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 Proteins
We use protein to make new cells, to repair damage and heal wounds and to grow.

The following things in our body contain mostly protein:

We also use protein for hormones, antibodies and the enzymes that we use to digest food.

Protein are long molecules made of chains of .

When they break down in your gut, the amino acids separate. There are 20 different ones. Cells join
them in different combinations to make every protein they need. It’s a bit like building thousands of
different models with just 20 different types of Lego bricks.

Test for Proteins

Put the food in a test tube and add about 1cm3 of sodium hydroxide solution.
Then add drops of copper sulfate solution.
If you see a purple colour the food contains protein.

Examples of food containing proteins:

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 Vitamins
Vitamins are nutrients that protect our bodies by helping them to function
well and fight diseases. We only need small amounts of most vitamins, and
we get these from the foods we eat.
The following table shows you some vitamins that humans need to be healthy
and shows what happens if your diet is deficient in any of the vitamins.

Good Source of the

Vitamin How it is used by the body
helping us to see,
especially in the dark
Protection from
infections and heals
wounds
making healthy bones
Deficiency Disease
Nutrient
dairy products, carrots,
night blindness green vegetables, oily
fish
scurvy (bleeding
oranges, lemons,
gums and internal
blackcurrants, kiwi fruit
organs)
milk, cheese, eggs, butter,
Rickets (softening of
oily fish, made in the skin
the bones)
in sunlight

Minerals
Our bodies also need minerals. Each mineral performs a different
function to keep the body healthy. All minerals originally come
from the soil, so green plants are an important source of minerals
for animals and humans.
The table below shows the main sources of some important minerals. The table also shows what
happens if your diet is deficient in any of the minerals.

Good Source of the

Mineral How it is used by the body
making red blood cells
making strong bones
and teeth
Deficiency Disease
Nutrient
Anaemia (low
Liver, nuts, wholegrain
number of red blood
cereal, eggs, beans
cells)
cheese, milk, spinach,
rickets
sardines and butter

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 Fibre
Fibre is sometimes called ‘roughage’. Fibre is cellulose, a carbohydrate
found in all
Cellulose cannot be digested in the human body but it plays an important
role by keeping food moving through our digestive systems. This helps to
prevent constipation. If your diet is deficient in fibre, you may suffer from
and more serious problems such as cancer.

Water
The human body is about 70% water. Water is necessary for substances
in the sweat, urine and blood. Sweat cools the body when it overheats. When we urinate, waste
products are removed from our bodies. Our blood transports oxygen and other important products
round the body.

The amount of water we need to drink varies depending on how active we are and how hot or cold
it is. The more active you are, the more you need, and the hotter it is, the more you should drink.

On average though, you need to drink each day.

If your diet is deficient in water, your body may become dehydrated. causes
your blood cells to shrivel up. This is dangerous and it can result in death.

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 A Balanced Diet
It is important to balance the amount of food we eat with who we are and what we do. A balanced
diet is one that contains the correct amounts of all the necessary nutrients needed for healthy growth
and activity. An imbalanced or poor diet can contain too much or too little of that particular nutrient.
If you have too little of a nutrient, we say that you have a deficiency.

Food is a store of chemical energy. If you look

carefully at food packets you will see the food's
energy content. This is usually measured in
kilojoules, kJ or kilocalories, kcal.

It is important to balance the amount of food we

eat with who we are and what we do. The amount
of energy we need from our food depends on:
› our age
› our height
› how active we are
› our stage in life – (babies, adolescents,
adults, pregnant)

State reasons why the people mentioned below should follow a different dietary plan:
1. Pregnant Mum: ________________________________

_____________________________________________

_____________________________________________

2. Child/Toddler: ________________________________

_____________________________________________

_____________________________________________

3. Athlete: ______________________________________

______________________________________________

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 The Healthy plate gives us a guide for eating throughout life.

Record your own meals in the spaces in the empty table. For each meal, name the main nutrients
and explain their use in the body.

Meal What I ate Main Nutrient List of Nutrients

Breakfast

Lunch

Dinner

Is you diet balance? ______________________

What was the main nutrient that you ate? ___________________________
Do you think the food you ate was suitable for the exercise you did? _______________
Give TWO improvements that you could make to your diet and explain how they can help you be
more healthy. _____________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________

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Name: Class: Date:

Food Tests
Question to investigate:
Do all foods contain the same nutrients?

Aim:
To find out which main nutrients are present in some common foods.

Apparatus:

Method:
For each food sample, try out all three tests.

Test 1: Test for Starch

Add a few drops of iodine solution to your food sample. If starch is present it turns
blue/black.

Test 2: Test for Proteins

Add some water to your food in a test tube and shake it. Then add a few drops of
Biuret reagent. If protein is present it will turn purple.

Test 3: Test for Proteins

Mix the food with a little ethanol and shake well. Filter and add to water. If fat is
present, it will form a white emulsion. Make sure to notice any change and fill in the
table of results on the following page.

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Precautions:
› Take care when handling iodine solution as it may stain
› Do not use any open flames around ethanol as it is flammable
› Always double check the name of the chemical you are supposed to use.

Results:
Food Test for Starch Test for Proteins Test for Fats

Conclusion:
Different foods contain different nutrients. From our results one can see that starch was
present in _____________________ as these foods turned blue/black with iodine
solution. Fat was present in _____________________ as an emulsion formed with
ethanol which is a positive result. Protein was present in ___________________ as a
purple colour was obtained with sodium hydroxide and copper sulfate solution.

Mark:
Max.

Participation 7

Report 5

Safety Issues 3

Experiment 1 15

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 Digestion of Food
Food begins its long journey through the digestive system in the mouth.
In digestion, large insoluble lumps of food are changed into soluble food which can enter the blood
system.

The process of breaking down our food is called

The system responsible for digestion is called the

The Digestive System

1.
2.

8.

3.
9.

4.

10.

5.
11.

6.

7.

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Mechanical and Chemical Digestion
Two types of digestion take place in our bodies:

and

In mechanical digestion, food is physically broken down into smaller pieces.

This starts with the teeth and continues throughout the digestive system as
food is squeezed and pushed by various muscles in the process of peristalsis.

Chemical digestion involves changing food into molecules of simpler

substances, which can dissolve in water. Digestive juices at various places in
the digestive system help this happen. These digestive juices contain
enzymes, which break down large food molecules into smaller ones.

Enzymes

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The Journey of the Food in the Digestive System

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Summary of the Most Important Points!
Different things happen to food as it passes through the digestive system.

The stomach
of food takes place in the mouth, stomach and
small intestine.
▪ In the mouth mechanical digestion takes place by the teeth.
▪ Some enzymes are involved in chemical digestion.
› Amylase: breaks down starch into sugars
The small intestine
› Protease: breaks down protein into amino acids
› Lipase: breaks down lipids (fats and oils) into fatty acids and
glycerol
▪ The produces which helps the
digestion of lipids (fats and oil).
The liver
▪ The produces biological catalysts called digestive
enzymes which speed up the digestive reactions.

of food back into the bloodstream takes places in

The pancreas
the small intestine. Water and wastes are left behind. The inner wall of the small
intestine is not smooth. It is lined with millions of tiny finger-like folds called
.

Absorption of back into the body in the large intestine. The large intestine

Any undigested food, fibre, dead cell linings and bacteria pass out of
the anus as faeces when we go to the toilet.

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