How do living things nourish themselves?
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All living things on this planet require nourishment to fuel and support vital operations. For instance, plants get water, minerals and nitrogen from the soil and produce there own carbohydrate, protein and fat. Meanwhile, animals consume other forms of life such as plants and animals or their products in order to survive. For humans, we consume animals and their products (i.e., milk, eggs) and/or plants and their products (fruits, vegetables, cereal grains). Even eating some forms of microbes (or microorganisms) such as yeast and some bacteria can help us survive and promote vitality. |
Humans exist at the upper end of the food chain, meaning that a large variety of life-forms are food to us, but we are not regular food for other life-forms. Plants, on the other hand, maintain a position at the other end of the food chain as they are food for many life-forms, including insects, fish, and mammals.
How are humans nourished?
In this day and age, as food manufacturers spend millions of dollars developing new forms of food, we still must adhere to the basic rule that humans naturally nourish themselves by eating other life forms. That means that it would be impossible to nourish our bodies with completely and optimally by manufactured foods unless those foods contained the same substances and in appropriate forms, amounts and combinations that we have obtained throughout our existence by eating other life-forms on this planet.
Humans are needy from a nutritional perspective. We have an inescapable need for numerous substances, some of which we cannot make internally and others we can, which we call nutrients. Quite simply, a nutrient is a substance that in some way nourishes the body. It will either provide energy or promote the growth, development and maintenance of our body or promote optimal function, health and longevity.
