Diabetes: Biological Molecules and Food

To-Do Date: Jan 25 at 9:30am

Why do we eat food? 

It isn't because it tastes good. It's the other way around. Food tastes good because we are adapted to eat what we need to survive. We need food for two equally important reasons:  

  1. the molecules and materials we need to build and repair cells in our bodies
  2. the energy stored in those molecules in order to keep our cells running and functioning.

Biological Molecules

What are the molecules that we need for these two purposes? There are 4 main categories that will sound very familiar to you because we often talk about nutrition and food in terms of these molecules

 

  • Carbohydrates
  • Lipids
  • Proteins
  • Nucleic Acids

 

Biological Molecules and Living Organisms

All living organisms are made out of cells and their cells are built out of the molecules above. So if you eat something that used to be alive ( steak , apple, carrot, etc) then it will be made out of those 4 types of biological molecules. Obviously an apple has less protein than a steak, but it still has some proteins.  A steak  has less carbohydrate than a carrot, but it still has some.

 

In the next activity you will learn more about these biological molecules, the building blocks that make them up (monomers) and some of the functions they serve inside cells.