FInal reflection

My experience regarding this project is rather fruitful, I learn quite alot of new facts and information after researching from quite a few websites for example how to keep a healthy diet is a topic which is very common but if you really want to understand it completely you got to research about each and every single nutritional facts and values.

This blog is rather useful because it acts like a transmitter to share whatever I had learnt in this past few weeks into the blog, when I forget about any facts, I can simply just use the blog as a reference to understand more on a particular topic

About writing out my learning targets, it helps as a guide-line to ensure that I follows whatever information that my target states and thus I can complete my target more efficiently.

I learn quite alot during this few weeks of research, some facts which may seemed to be hard to "digest" but after tons of research, I can finally understand what the facts means. Basically, I learnt lots of stuff despite using the conventional way of learning.

I will be doing my final presentation soon.

FAQ about this project

How long is the digestive system?
Can a healthy diet reduce my risk?
How do enzymes help in digestion?
Why is nutrition so important?
How to read nutrition facts?
What is the function of villi?
_______________________
Questions about doing the project?

1.Do we need to put our reflection into the final presentation?
2.What is the use of the blog after we completed the final presentation?
3.What is the purpose of the meal log, can we just put a brief description about what we eat on our blog instead of creating the meal log because I find that creating the meal-log is rather troublesome?

Week 8 reflection

I've completed all my reflections and I am going for the final reflection, I think that this blog is useful in updating what I've done every week, I've also completed the food pyramid which is also a guide-line for a healthy diet. So far, I am left with posting a few difficult questions that I encounter during this few weeks and completing my final presentation which will be done on on power-point slides.

Food Pyramid

1.At the top of the food pyramid are food such as fats, oils, sugar and salt, this food are eaten mainly to enhance taste, this food should only be eaten sparingly.

2.The next row of food are meat and alternatives, this food are eaten mainly for growth, about 2 servings and 250-500ml of milk per day.

3.a) The next row are food which are grouped in 2 groups, the first group are food such as fruits which are mainly for good health about 2 servings per day.

3.b) This food are food which helps in bowel movements which are food such as vegetables, they are eaten mainly for good health about 2 servings per day.

4. This food are food such as rice and other alternatives, they are mainly eaten for energy, about 6-7 servings ( including 1 serving of whole grains per day*)

* 1 servings= 1 bread
= 1/2 cup of rice or other alternatives
= 1/2 cup of vegetables or fruits
= 1 dice of margarine and spreads

Trans-Fat

Trans fat is a common name for unsaturated fat, it is commonly known as bad fats that has trans-isomer fatty acids. These fats may be monounsaturated or polyunsaturated but can never be saturated.

Trans fat is formed when vegetable oils undergo hydrogenation, an industrial process that hardens liquid oil to produce fats like hard margarine and shortening. Trans fat raises LDL (‘bad’) cholesterol and lowers HDL (‘good’) cholesterol levels, thus increasing the risk of heart disease. The main sources of trans fat in our diet are pastries, cakes, cookies, biscuits, commercially deep-fried food as well as products containing vegetable shortening and hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils.

This fats thus harm your health no matter where is it from. Both saturated and trans fat increases the amount of LDL cholesterol ( bad cholesterol) and decreases the amount of HDL cholesterol(good cholesterol), increasing the chance of coronary heart disease.It is best to not take or take minimal trans-fat as possible because it is not good for your health and may lead to diseases and health problems.

Make sure you read the nutrition information panel to ensure that minimal trans-fat are stored in a particular food.

Fats

Fat is a component in food. Some food including vegetables and fruits have almost no fats, others may have plenty of fats such as oil, meat,butter.etc. Fat plays an important role in our body, functioning as an energy store, a cushion for vital organs and a transport system for fat-soluble vitamins. That is why we require some fat in our diet. However, as fat is a concentrated source of calories (9kcal/g compared to 4kcal/g for carbohydrate and protein), eating too much may lead to weight gain and obesity.

SO HOW MUCH FATS SHOULD I HAVE?

Fat should make up about 25-30% of our total energy intake. Based on a typical 2000kcal diet, the total fat allowance is about 55 to 65g a day. It’s easy to exceed this allowance if one is not mindful. If we take in too much fats for our total energy intake, it may lead to obesity and serious heart diseases.

Fats have many functions in the body, and these include:

• Important for providing energy and maintaining body temperature.
• Insulates and acts as a shock absorber for bones and organs.
• Helps the body absorb the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K.
• Is a structural component of myelin, the fatty insulating sheath surrounding each nerve fibre, enabling it to carry messages faster.

Fat deficiency is rarely seen in the modern society. However the danger of lack of fats may lead to weight loss, dryness of the skin, atopic eczema and others.

There are 4 kinds of fats

• Saturated fat
• Monounsaturated fat
• Polyunsaturated fat
• Trans fat

I will not be talking about every single kinds of fats except for trans-fat.

Here are some ways you can prevent yourself from having too much fats:

At home:

• Use less oil in cooking. Choose oils higher in unsaturated fat, and avoid re-using oils more than twice.
• Adopt healthier cooking methods (e.g. steaming, baking) more often. Replace coconut milk or coconut cream in cooking with low fat milk.
• Use fat spreads (e.g. margarine, butter, kaya, peanut butter) sparingly.
• Choose low fat dairy products, lean meats, fish and skinless poultry
• Consume fish at least twice a week. Replace meat in dishes with beans and bean products (e.g. tofu) on some days.

When eating out:

• Choose dishes prepared without coconut cream or coconut milk
• Replace fried noodles with soup noodles occasionally
• Limit deep-fried food to no more than twice a week.
• Consume high-fat bakery products (e.g. pastries, cakes and cookies) less often.
• Remove visible fat and skin from meat and poultry.
• Ask for less oil and gravy in food.

When Shopping for food:

• Read the ingredient list to identify products that contain hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated fats/oils/shortening. These are likely to be high in saturated and trans fat.
• Read the Nutrition Information Panel on food labels to compare the amount of fat in food products.
• Choose products with the Healthy Choice symbol as they are lower in total and saturated fat compared to other products in similar categories. These products also have no trans fat or only negligible amounts of it per serving.

Week 7 reflection

I am doing quite fine with this final topic, so far everything works great for my blog. This blog seemed to really help me alot when reflecting on the facts about each and every topic or questions.

After this reflection, I will go straight into doing my final topic, fats and trans-fat, it'll be a long topic but I will upload some picture for easy references. I will not be uploading the meal-log since I had done 1 in my earlier post so that it'll save time for my final topic, the food pyramid!

Week 6 reflection

So this week I will be doing about another challenging topic called fats and trans fat, basically I will be posting a few facts about fats and tran-fats on week 7, I have found this topic quite challenging and quite difficult to explain because of its contents, so I got to spent quite some time dealing with this topic to make sure that I understand it.

So far I've done a few research about fats and trans-fats. Here are some websites I took references from:

http://kidshealth.org/kid/stay_healthy/food/fat.html
http://www.hpb.gov.sg/foodforhealth/article.aspx?id=5634
http://www.asiaone.com/Health/Eat%2BRight/Story/A1Story20090615-148523.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfats

For week8, I've plan to do something more achievable and more useful for reference, I will be doing a food pyramid and will be posting each and every single food to take note of in the food pyramid. After week8, I will be posting some "brain storming" questions which I encounter during this few weeks and last but not least I will end my project with my final reflection!

Proteins

Protein is any of a class of nitrogenous organic compounds that consist of large molecules composed of one or more long chains of amino acids and are an essential part of all living organisms, esp. as structural components of body tissues such as muscle, hair, collagen, etc., and as enzymes and antibodies.

Proteins are stored in most dairy products such as beef, poultry, fish egg. Proteins builds up, maintains, and replaces the tissues in your body. Most of our body parts are made up of mostly proteins.

Our body uses proteins for many life-processes such as making hemoglobin and for movements and other essential processes.

When we eat foods that contain proteins, the digestive juices in our stomach breaks down proteins into smaller pieces called amino acids. These amino acids can reused to make the proteins your body needs to maintain muscles, bones, blood, and body organs.

Proteins are sometimes described as long necklaces with differently shaped beads. Each bead is a small amino acid. These amino acids can join together to make thousands of different proteins. Scientists have found many different amino acids in protein, but 22 of them are very important to human health.

Of those 22 amino acids, your body can make 13 of them without you ever thinking about it. Your body can't make the other nine amino acids, but you can get them by eating protein-rich foods. They are called essential amino acids because it's essential that you get them from the foods you eat.

Most proteins fold into unique 3-dimensional structures. The shape into which a protein naturally folds is known as its native conformation.

The best-known role of proteins in the cell is as enzymes, which catalyzes chemical reactions. Enzymes are usually highly specific and accelerate only one or a few chemical reactions. Enzymes carry out most of the reactions involved in metabolism , as well as manipulating DNA in processes such as DNA replication, DNA repair, and transcription. Some enzymes act on other proteins to add or remove chemical groups in a process known as post-translational modification. About 4,000 reactions are known to be catalyzed by enzymes. Enzymes can consist of hundred of amino-acids.

Different Kinds of Protein

Protein from animal sources, such as meat and milk, is called complete, because it contains all nine of the essential amino acids. Most vegetable protein is considered incomplete because it lacks one or more of the essential amino acids. This can be a concern for someone who doesn't eat meat or milk products. But people who eat a vegetarian diet can still get all their essential amino acids by eating a wide variety of protein-rich vegetable foods.

What does protein do everyday?

• Anti bodies which consist of protein are essential in helping our bodies fight and resist diseases.
• You use up protein in everyday living just to keep your body running smoothly.
• Everyday we lose protein in the form of hair, skin and nails.
• Protein is supplied to the body to help heal and repair injuries.
• For growing children protein is needed for growth of the entire body.
• If you have an operation protein is needed to help build your body back to fitness.

Week 5 reflection

I've done my research on proteins and will be posting all the important facts soon

Week 4 reflection

For this week, I will be researching on the topic called proteins, this topic consist of many important facts so I will need quite some time to think about them and will post my findings next week.

This topic is very challenging so I encounter quite a few problems in trying to find out the meanings of each information about proteins. So far I've been researching on websites and found a few useful websites.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein
http://kidshealth.org/kid/nutrition/food/protein.html

Week 3 reflection

The research I made this week is rather easy, not much of a challenge, the websites I took the information from is:
http://happyhealthyandhomely.blogspot.com/2009/01/balance-of-good-health.html

So far until week 3 I have completed all my learning targets that I've stated in my blog, I will be starting on 2 new challenging topics: protein, fats and trans fat

The next topic which I will be researching is protein and I will take about 2 weeks to complete this topic and post my findings on the blog.

Why do we need to miantain a healthy diet

A balance and healthy diet is very important for our bodies to function properly. If you do not eat a balance diet then your body capabilities are lessened. Eating an unhealthy diet might lead to obesity, heart diseases and other medical problems.

Eating the right food can give you vitamins and proteins which are essential for your daily needs so that you can grow and repair your body properly and you wont feel tired.

Balance your diet (Why is it important?)
No single food contains all the essential nutrients the body need to be healthy and function efficiently. The nutritional value of a person's diet depends on the overall mixture, or balance, of foods that is eaten over a period of time, as well as the needs of each individual. A balance diet is thus needed to include a large variety of food so that an adequate amount of different nutrients is archived.

*Adequate intakes of vitamins, minerals and dietary fibre are important for health, and there is growing evidence that a number of bioactive plant substances found in fruit and vegetables are also important in promoting good health.

Week 2 reflection

This week I did most of the researching and I found most of the important facts from books borrowed from library or from textbooks but I also manage to find a few websites for easy reference if you find what I have wrote a little too difficult.

A few websites about How the digestive system works:

http://digestive.niddk.nih.gov/ddiseases/pubs/yrdd/
http://altmedicine.about.com/cs/digestiveproblems/a/DigestiveSystem.htm
http://kidshealth.org/parent/general/body_basics/digestive.html

The next topic I will be researching on is
" Why do we need maintain a healthy diet"

How the digestive system works

1st stop: Mouth
Both physical and chemical digestions take place in the mouth. The teeth break down food mechanically into small pieces to increase the surface area of the food exposed to the enzymes. The food is mixed with saliva produced by the saliva glands. Saliva contains the digestive enzyme, amylase, which breaks down starch in the food into maltose, a type of sugar. The other types of food molecules are not broken into smaller molecules in the mouth.

2nd stop: Oesophagus (gullet)
The gullet is a long and narrow tube joining the mouth and the stomach. When the food is swallowed, it does not "drop" or "fall" into the stomach through the oesophagus by the action of gravity. Instead, the oesophagus has strong muscles in its walls. These muscles contract and relaz to produce a wave-like movement that pushes the food into the stomach. This involuntary wave-like pattern of contractions is called peristalsis.

3rd stop: stomach
The stomach is a muscular bag which is able to expand to take in different amounts of food. The muscles in the wall of the stomach contract and churn the food to mix with a digestive juice called gastric juice.

Protease
Gastric juice is produced by the lining of the stomach and contains hydrochloric acid and proteases. The proteases in the stomach digest the proteins in the food into shorter chains of amino acids

Hydrochloric acid
Proteases in the stomach work well in acidic conditions. The hydrochloric acid provides the acidic condition in the stomach for the proteases to work . It also kills bacteria which may have been swallowed with the food.

The food stays in the stomach for a few hours and is slowly moved by peristalsis to the small intestine. By the time the food leaves the stomach, it would have turned into a thick mass of semi-liquid called chyme.

4th stop: Small intestine
the small intestine is a long and narrow tube joining the stomach and the large intestine. The small intestine is where most of the chemical digestion and absorption of food take place.
As the chyme enters the small intestine from the stomach, it is mixed with secretions from the liver, pancreas and the small intestine itself.

Bile
The liver produces a liquid called bile. It is stored in the gall bladder released into the small intestine through the bile duct to break down fats into tiny fat droplets.

The pancreas produces pancreatic juice and the small intestine produces intestinal juice. Glucose, amino acids, fatty acids and glycerol are the main end products of digestion. These molecules are now small enough to pas through the wall of the small intestine and into the bloodstream.

The digested food is absorbed by the small intestine. Some water, vitamins and mineral salts are absorbed too. These nutrients then diffuse out of the intestinal cells and and most of them enter the bloodstream through the capillaries. The end product of digestion are used for cellular procesesses like respiration, grouwth, and tissue repair.

5th Stop: large intestine
The undigested food moves from the small intestine into the large intestine by peristalsis.
The undigested food is made up largely of fibres which come from the cellulose that makes up the cell walls of vegetables and fruits. This provides roughage which helps in bowel movement. Some water is present too.

There are many different types of bacteria living in the large intestine. Most of these bacteria are harmless. Some are beneficial as they are able to make vitamins which are needed by the body. The cells lining the large intestine absorb these vitamins as well as mineral salt and excess water.

The mixture of undigested food and dead bacteria is called faeces and is stored temporarily in the rectum. Most of the time, the muscles in the rectum stay contracted. When the ring-like muscles between the rectum and anus relax, faeces is passed out of the body through the anus, This is known as defaecation.

Meal Log ( what I ate in week 1)