Important Food Components

The macronutrients:

PROTEIN (PRO) [is king] STATS:

• 4 calories/gram
• made up of amino acid in clusters of 22
• these amino acids are broken down into clusters of 2 or 3 (dipeptides, or tripeptides)
• these peptide bonds are transported through the wall of the small intestine and then these chains are rebuilt to create and repair tissue
• this takes quite a bit of work!

CARBOHYDRATE (CHO) STATS:

• 4 calories/gram
• consist of starchy CHO’s & fibrous CHO’s
• Complex CHO’s require that your body has to produce enzymes to break that food apart into chains of sugars, the chains are then slowly broken apart and then produce insulin to transport those sugars through the wall of the digestive tract

FAT STATS:

• 9 calories/gram
• when you eat fat, your body does not have all that much work to do
• to digestively deal with fat your body does not require that much energy
• fat has twice the amount of calories than that of CHO’s and PRO’s and requires far less energy to digest
• you only need to ingest a small amount of essential fats