Dietary Goals Essay

This assignment will include dietary goals required to maintaining health, how exercise is beneficial to maintain physical fitness and, an understanding of the factors influencing changing patterns of health and disease in a community.

Different nutritional requirements depending on size, age and sex relate directly to the different stages of human development, for instance;

Statistics show that infants aged one-two months old (fed on breast-milk) ideally take on the following amounts of nutrients per day as an estimated intake; boys 526 (kcal), and girls 478 (kcal). At four months old soft foods are introduced, steadily increasing the nutrients for the rest of the infancy stage. The next stage of development is childhood, at one-three years

Lastly, to limit energy intake from total fats moving energy consumption from saturated fats to un-saturated fats, towards the elimination of trans-fatty acids in the diet. The (WHO) dietary goals are only effective if individuals choose to live by them, however a healthy diet is dictated by costly food prices, an individual’s education, and media influences (WHO,

Under-nutrition is a sub-category of malnutrition; this occurs when an individual has a diminished nutritional intake from their diet. Some examples of diseases associated with malnutrition could be; firstly a vitamin D deficiency. Vitamin D is essential for the correct absorption of the mineral calcium in the body to assist in the development of the bones and teeth. Without vitamin D being absorbed and utilised in the body rickets and/or osteoporosis can occur resulting in spontaneous fractures, overactive parathyroid hormones, depression and fatigue (Garnham, 2013). Another example of deficiency disease’s associated with malnutrition are the by factors that are caused as a result of poor absorption of the vitamin B complex. The vitamin B complex consists of several parts, all of which are absorbed for individual purposes in the body. For example; anaemia is a deficiency caused as a result of not enough iron or vitamin B12 (part of the B vitamin complex) being absorbed by the body. Iron or B12 is the anti-anaemic substance required for the formation of healthy blood cells to transport oxygen around the body efficiently (Watson,