Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Biology Notes
GCE Study Buddy
Nutrition
• Nutrition is the intake of food and the
processes that convert food substances into
living matter.
• Comprises of the following
o FEEDING: the intake of food into the body
o DIGESTION: the process whereby large food
molecules are broken down into soluble and
diffusible molecules that can be absorbed into the
body cells.
o ABSORPTION: the process whereby digested
food materials are taken into the body cells.
o ASSIMILATION: the process whereby some of
the absorbed food materials are converted into
new protoplasm or used to provide energy
Types of Nutrition in
Organisms
• Autotrophic: most autotrophic organism
make their own food by photosynthesis. They
use carbon dioxide, water, and the sun’s
energy to accomplish this.
• Heterotrophic: where the organism obtains
food from the environment. Heterotrophs can
be further categorized as being parasitic if
they obtain nutrition from a live host or
saprophytic if they obtain theirnutrition from
dead organisms.
o Saprophytes:
Herbivores: consume plant matter
Carnivores: consume animal matter
Omnivores: obtain their nutrition from both.
Physical & Chemical
Digestion
• Physical digestion:
o Mechanical breakdown of food into small particles
o Increases the surface area to volume ratio of the ingested
food so that digestive enzymes can act on the food more
efficiently.
o Occurs in the mouth, when you chew food using your teeth
and in the stomach, where churning of the stomach walls
breaks up the food particles and mixes them with digestive
enzymes.
• Chemical digestion:
o Enzymatic hydrolysis (recall Chap 4) of large food molecules
into small soluble molecules which can be absorbed.
o Achieved by the digestive enzymes found in the mouth,