Factors Affecting Food Choice and Digestion Process

Running head: NUTRITION AND DIET
NUTRITION AND DIET
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NUTRITION AND DIET
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Answer number 1.
In the choice of food, the taste is of prime importance. However, there are other factors
which pose an impact on the food choice, which includes the following:
 Economic factors: People with less income tends to prefer cheaper foods and consume
unbalanced diet (De Cosmi, Scaglioni and Agostoni 2017).
 Cultural factor: People of different culture have different choice of food. Eg. Some like
pizza or some other like freshly baked foods.
 Advertisers: People chose attractive and good looking food, although of different taste.
 Health: People who prefer good health have healthy food choice only
 Hunger: Hunger leads to choice of food irrespective of taste and health.
Answer number 2.
Digestion of food moves through GI tract, which being with mouth and end at rectum.
The muscle of the GI tract aid in digestion and absorption of food. The muscle of oesophagus
and ring-like muscle at the junction of oesophagus and stomach allow involuntary passage of
food and controls the passage (Boland 2016). The inner lining of stomach, liver and pancreas
secrete acid and digestive juices which breakdown the food particle into protein, glucose and
carbohydrate. The muscle of intestine has hair like projection known as villi, which provide large
surface area for complete digestion of food particles.
Answer number 3.
a) Major nutrient of the following food items:

NUTRITION AND DIET
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 Turkey breast (57gm) –protein (10.3g), carbohydrate (1.2 g), fats (4g) (Bower
2016).
 Potato (238g) - Fats (13g), carbohydrate (21g), protein (2.9g) (Zaheer and Akhtar
2016).
 Cornbread (28.35g) - carbohydrate (12.3g), protein (1.9g) fats (2g) (Fontenot et
al. 2019).
 Spinach (100g)-carbohydrate (3.8g), protein (3g), fat (0.3g) (Xu and Leskovar
2015).
The carbohydrates, proteins and fats are digested by the action of digestive juices
secreted by stomach, liver and pancreas (Guo et al., 2017). They breakdown each of the nutrient
into simplest form i.e. glucose, amino acids and triacylglycerol. The small intestine absorbs them
and circulated in the bloodstream to provide ATP.
Answer number 4.
Taking strict diet, which avoided fats and oil entirely, tends to show symptom night
vision impairment. The diet and symptom are related because it is evident that due to low
consumption of fats in the diet, people unable to get an adequate amount of DHA and omega
fatty acids due to which they suffer from visual issue and degradation of the retina (Ginneken et
al. 2017).
The primary role of fats is to provide an important element for proper development of
vision and functioning of vision. They secrete omega 3 Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and
Eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and omega 6, which is essential for retinal functioning.