What is Nutrional Counseling?

Nutritional science is the body of scientific knowledge of the nutritional requirements of humans for maintenance, growth, activity, and reproduction. Dietetics is the health profession with primary responsibility for the practical application of nutritional science to persons and groups of persons in various conditions of health and disease. A clinical nutrition specialist is the nutrition authority on the health care team and carries the major responsibility for the nutritional care of patients and clients in collaboration with the physician and nurse. The public health nutritionish carries the main responsibility for nutritional care of groups of people in the community, especially those high risk groups who require assessment of need and community programs to meet these needs. Other registered dietitians work in private practice, in teaching, in school food services, or in laboratory research.

Functions of food and nutrients

The functions of food in human nutrition must be distinguished to be understood. First, forget that the body requires any particular food or food combination for health. For centuries, humans have subsisted on wide varieties of foods, depending on what was available and what the culture desiggnated as human food. Various foods are important vechiles for taking nutrients into the body and bringing humans pleasure and comfort.
Instead, it is specific chemical compounds or elecments - the nutrients 00 in a variety of foods that the body requires. About 40 of these essential nutrients are known. Others are probably yet to be discovered. The known ones include macronutrients - carbohydrates, fats, and proteins - constituent substances of which supply engergy and build tissue, and the micronutrients - vitamins and minerals that the body uses in much smaller amounts to regulate and control body processes. Water is the overall vital nutrient sustaining all our life processes. The term metabolism refers to the sum of all chemical processes in the body hat sustain life and health.