Why Protein and Fats are more important than Carbohydrates.
Carbohydrates give energy but in terms of true function don’t have a large amount of use for this reason they are a luxury nutrient.
Proteins and fats on the other hand in their basic forms and in structural forms are essential.
Proteins, in their stepped down form are made up of amino acids. These amino acids when bonded together as nitrogen oxygen bond can form a structural protein or functional protein.
There are 20 amino acids that are either essential or non essential amino acids. The essential amino acids need to be consumed in foods. The non essential amino acids can be manufactured in the body from other amino acid structures.
Structural proteins can form cells, that become tissues of various varieties that can make up muscles, organs and connective tissue.
There are 20 amino acids that are either essential or non essential amino acids. The essential amino acids need to be consumed in foods. The non essential amino acids can be manufactured in the body from other amino acid structures.
There are 2 x protein sources; vegetable and animal sources.
Vegetable sources are low quality incomplete sources of amino acids. Especially the essential amino acids.
Whereas animal sources are high quality complete sources of amino acids. Especially the essential amino acids.
Because proteins are made of amino acids are the building blocks of many structural proteins and functional proteins such as enzymes, hormones etc. It’s important to make sure that you get enough protein and makes sure you get quality sources.
Fat or fatty acids are essential for not only the structure of cells but also a lot of the important hormones made from the cholesterol molecule.
There are quite a few fats that are necessary for different types of transport fats, structural fats, hormones and energy sources.
There are essentially 2 types of fats saturated and unsaturated fats.
Saturated fats can be made by the body and unsaturated fats cannot.
There are then cis and trans fats. The cis fats are more naturally occurring in food and can be metabolised in the body.
The trans fats are industrially made fats that are used to help preserve foods. Trans fats cannot be metabolised and can be inflammatory.
The unsaturated fats can be monounsaturated which means one unsaturated site polyunsaturated which means more than one unsaturated site.
The omega 3 fats have unsaturated sites between the 3 and 4th carbon from polar end of the fatty acid Molecule and repeating at the 6th carbon, 9th carbon, 12th carbon and so on depending on the fatty acid.
The Omega 6 fatty acids have the Unsaturated sites starting at carbon 6 and repeating every 3 carbons again depending on the fatty acids.
All fatty acids have a different role but some can be essential such as all the monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids.
Trans fats are not essential nor able to be metabolised completely and are inflammatory and should be avoided.
Trans fats are in processed foods and some cooking oils to preserve the fats in the foods and oils.
It’s important to make sure you have enough fats and also a variety of fats in your diet.
Whenever I structure a diet, I first make sure that there enough of a variety of high quality sources of protein and fatty acids in a persons diet to maintain health.
How much of each depends on the goals, age and
Then I allow carbohydrates to make up the rest of the calories.
When you need to adjust calories keep protein the same, remove some carbohydrates and keep fats as the same percentage of your overall calories.
In no way am I saying that carbohydrates are not useful but they are not as essential as fats and Proteins.
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