Nutrition

Nutrition is a subject where you study and learn the relationship between diet and health. We learned about what and how much you should eat during a day depending on how much energy you need during the day. What and how much you should eat is different from person to person. If you are a person who exercises a lot and if you do a lot of sports in your spare time, it is very important that you eat and sleep a lot. If you just sit at home and watch TV or surf on the Internet you will not need as much energy as a person who trains several times a week.

When we studied Nutrition we learned a lot about the foodcircle and the plate model and also the connection between these two. The foodcircle is a round circle who describes all the different nutrients a meal should consist of, and suggestions of foods that is containing of them. The circle includes nutrients as proteins (meet, fish), carbohydrates (pasta, potatoes), fats (butter, oil), vitamins and minerals (fruit and vegetables). The plate model describes how much of the meal a certain nutrient should cover of the plate.

Depending on what activity you are going to exercise, you will need different amounts of different nutrients. If you are going to compete in a long skiing competition, the carbohydrates should take most place of the plate, because it gives you a lot of energy that will last the longest. If you are going to relax and not work out, you do not need to eat as much carbohydrates, instead you can eat more vegetables because you will not need as much energy.
One time our teacher brought different kinds of foods that are common to eat for breakfast, like bread, yoghurt, oatmeal, seeds, juice and other things. We were going to eat the foods, not only the things we use to it, but foods we normally do not it for breakfast and also try various combinations of them.
We did this to discover new options and other ways of eating our breakfast

We only studied Nutrition two times a week, the second half-year of the first year in high school. I enjoined it very much because I learned a lot that can be useful in life. Nutrition is an interesting and necessary subject that I think everyone should be able to study in high school, not just the students that are studying on the physical education programme. Even if you do not like to visit the gym, go for a run, play football in a teem or other types of exercises, it is still important to learn about health.

Mikaela Hedstig