Download This Sample
This sample is exclusively for KidsKonnect members!
To download this worksheet, click the button below to signup for free (it only takes a minute) and you'll be brought right back to this page to start the download!
Sign Me Up
Table of Contents
An organism uses food to sustain itself through a biochemical and physiological process known as nutrition. It gives living things nutrition that can be processed to produce energy and chemical building blocks.
See the fact file below for more information about Nutrition, or download the comprehensive worksheet pack, which contains over 11 worksheets and can be used in the classroom or homeschooling environment.
Key Facts & Information
Study
- The chemical revolution in the late 18th century marked the beginning of food and nutrition analysis via science. To establish nutrition theories, chemists in the 18th and 19th centuries experimented with various elements and dietary sources.
- Thiamine was the first vitamin to be chemically discovered, and in the decades that followed, the role of vitamins in nutrition was researched.
- The study of nutrition has focused chiefly on human food and agriculture, with ecology as a secondary concern. The first proposed dietary limits for humans were created during the Great Depression and World War II due to their relevance in human health.
Nutrients
- The ability of an organism to live, develop, and reproduce depends on the availability of nutrients, which give the organism energy and physical building blocks. A nutrient may be a complex macromolecule or a vital ingredient.
- Cells take in nutrients and utilize them in metabolic and biochemical processes. These include fueling reactions that generate energy and precursor metabolites, biosynthetic reactions that transform precursor metabolites into building block molecules, polymerization reactions that join these molecules to form macromolecule polymers, and assembly reactions that use these polymers to create cellular structures.
Nutritional Groups
- Depending on how they receive carbon and energy, organisms can be categorized. Heterotrophs use carbon from other species to gain nutrients. Nevertheless, autotrophs are living things nourished from inorganic sources like carbon dioxide.
- Certain plankton and carnivorous plants are examples of mixotrophs, which are creatures that may be heterotrophic and autotrophic. Chemotrophs use chemical energy from materials, whereas phototrophs get their power from light.
- Although lithotrophs get their electrons from inorganic materials like water, hydrogen sulfide, dihydrogen, iron (II), sulfur, or ammonium, organography gets theirs by eating other creatures.
- Auxotrophs must absorb preexisting nutrients, but prototrophs can synthesize vital nutrients from other molecules.
Nutrient Cycle
- A nutrient cycle is a biogeochemical process that involves the exchange of organic matter for inorganic matter as it moves through a mix of soil, organisms, air, and water.
- Whereas the transfer of minerals and nutrients is cyclical, energy flow is unidirectional and noncyclic. Carbon, sulfur, nitrogen, water, phosphorus, and oxygen are among the mineral cycles that are constantly recycled with other mineral nutrients into beneficial ecological nutrition.
- Water, carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur are involved in the biogeochemical cycles carried out by living things and natural processes.
Foraging
- Finding nutrition in the environment is the process of foraging. It could also include how the resources are used after that. While certain species, like bacteria and mammals, can move about to gather nourishment, plants, and fungus must reach forth to do the same.
- Foraging may be haphazard, where an organism randomly seeks resources, or it can be systematic, where an organism can go straight to a food source.
- While some creatures are generalists that can eat a range of foods, others are specialists that have evolved to forage for a specific food source.
Nutrient Deficiency
- Malnutrition, also known as nutritional shortages, is when an organism doesn’t have the nutrients it requires. Either poor nutritional absorption or unexpected nutrient loss could bring this on.
- When this happens, an organism will adjust by lowering energy expenditure and consumption to extend the usage of nutrients that have been stored.
- After its energy supplies are low, it will start to break down its body mass to generate more energy.
In Organisms
Animals
- Animals are heterotrophs, meaning they eat other things to get nutrition. Animals that are herbivores consume plants, carnivores consume meat, and omnivores consume both plants and animals.
- All macronutrients, except water, are needed by the body for energy, although this is not their only physiological purpose.
- Kilocalories, sometimes called calories, measure the energy consumed by food’s macronutrients. The energy required to boost one kilogram of water by one degree Celsius is one calorie.
- Animals digest the protein they eat into amino acids, which are then utilized to create new proteins. Cellular fluids, enzymes, and structures are all made of protein (biological catalysts.)
- Animals form favorable and unfavorable associations with foods that impact their health. With conditioned food aversion, they might intuitively reject meals that have resulted in toxic damage or nutritional imbalances.
Human
- Like other animals, foraging for minerals was how early humans got their sustenance. Yet, it diverged with the Neolithic Revolution, when people invented agriculture to generate food at the start of the Holocene.
- Human behavior and nutrition are intimately intertwined, making it a social science and biology topic. Humans must combine eating for nutrition with enjoyment, and the ideal diet might change based on demographics and health issues.
- People consume a range of foods because they are omnivores. From the dawn of agriculture, the cultivation of grains and bread has been essential to human nourishment.
- In humans, inadequate nutrition can result in nutrient-deficit illnesses like obesity and metabolic syndrome or nutrient-excess diseases like cretinism, premature delivery, stillbirth, anemia, and scurvy.
Domesticated Animal
- Using animal feed, humans can regulate the diets of all domesticated animals, including pets, livestock, working animals, and other animals in captivityβgiving cattle food and forage.
- In particular, dog and cat foods have undergone extensive research, and they frequently include all the nutrients these animals need.
- Cats need extra nutrients obtained from meat since they are sensitive to common nutrients like taurine. Large-breed puppies are more likely to become overweight because small-breed dog food contains more calories than they can consume.
Plant
- Most plants get their nutrients from inorganic materials taken up by the soil or the environment. The key ingredients that make up organic material in a plant and enable enzymatic reactions are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and sulfur.
- Via their roots and leaves, plants absorb critical nutrients from the soil and the air, primarily nitrogen, and oxygen. Cation exchange, in which root hairs pump hydrogen ions (H+) into the ground using proton pumps, allows nutrient absorption in the soil.
- Although there is a lot of nitrogen in the atmosphere of the Earth, few plants can utilize it directly. Thus, most plants need nitrogen-containing chemicals in the soil where they are grown.
- The plant must find other energy sources because these nutrients don’t give to them. Green plants use chloroplasts to capture solar energy, which is then transformed into sound energy during photosynthesis.
Fungus
- Fungi are chemoheterotrophs, meaning they get their energy from eating other things. The root-like mycelium, which develops through the organism’s source of nourishment and may spread endlessly, is how most fungi consume material.
- Animals, plants, or other fungi are examples of live hosts that parasitic fungi adhere to and feed on. Fungi that are saprophytes eat dead and decaying creatures. Fungi that live in symbiosis with other species share nutrients with them as they grow.
Protist
- Any eukaryotes that are not animals, plants, or fungi are classified as protozoa, and there is considerable variation among them. Algae are protists that can make energy from light through photosynthetic processes.
- Several protists exhibit both phototrophic and heterotrophic traits, making them mixotrophic. When their principal source of nutrients is unavailable, mixotrophic protists usually rely on one and use the other as a backup or temporary substitute.
Prokaryote
- The methods used by prokaryotes, such as bacteria and archaea, to collect nutrients differ significantly.
- Prokaryotes can degrade chemical substances surrounding them but can only move soluble molecules through their cell envelopes.
- Prokaryotes that feed on other single-celled creatures include Bdellovibrio and Ensifer.
- Prokaryotes use a variety of predatory tactics, such as adhering to an organism’s exterior surface and destroying it from the outside, penetrating its cytoplasm, or invading its periplasm.
- Predatory prokaryotes may avoid attachment by manufacturing hydrolytic enzymes in large quantities.
Nutrition Worksheets
This bundle includes 11 ready-to-use Nutrition worksheets that are perfect for students to learn about Nutrition, which is the science that interprets the interaction of nutrients and other substances in food (e.g. phytonutrients, anthocyanins, tannins, etc.) in relation to maintenance, growth, reproduction, health, and disease of an organism.
Complete List of Worksheets Included:
- Nutrition Facts
- Healthy Bookmark
THE NUTRIENTS - Vitamins – Letter Jumble
- Minerals – Mineral Chow
- Proteins – Their Function
- Carbohydrates – Carbo-art
- Fiber – Fiber Acrostic Poetry
- Fats – Four Fats Word Find
- Water – How it Works
- Reflection
- My Healthy Regimen
Frequently Asked QuestionsΒ
What is nutrition?
An organism uses food to sustain itself through a biochemical and physiological process known as nutrition. It gives living things nutrition that can be processed to produce energy and chemical building blocks.
What is the function of nutrients?
The ability of an organism to live, develop, and reproduce depends on the availability of nutrients, which give the organism energy and physical building blocks. A nutrient may be a complex macromolecule or a vital ingredient.
What is nutrient cycle?
A nutrient cycle is a biogeochemical process that involves the exchange of organic matter for inorganic matter as it moves through a mix of soil, organisms, air, and water.
What is the other term for nutrient deficiency?
Malnutrition, also known as nutritional shortages, is when an organism doesn’t have the nutrients it requires. Either poor nutrition absorption or unexpected nutrient loss could bring this on.
What is foraging?
Finding nutrition in the environment is the process of foraging. It could also include how the resources are used after that. While certain species, like bacteria and mammals, can move about to gather nourishment, plants, and fungus must reach forth to do the same.
Link/cite this page
If you reference any of the content on this page on your own website, please use the code below to cite this page as the original source.
Link will appear as Nutrition Facts & Worksheets: https://kidskonnect.com - KidsKonnect, January 2, 2018
Use With Any Curriculum
These worksheets have been specifically designed for use with any international curriculum. You can use these worksheets as-is, or edit them using Google Slides to make them more specific to your own student ability levels and curriculum standards.