Nutrition, nourishment, or aliment, is the supply of materials – food – required by organisms and cells to stay alive. In science and human medicine, nutrition is the science or practice of consuming and utilizing foods.
In hospitals, nutrition may refer to the food requirements of patients, including nutritional solutions delivered via an IV (intravenous) or IG (intragastric) tube.
Nutritional science studies how the body breaks food down (catabolism) and repairs and creates cells and tissue (anabolism) – catabolism and anabolism = metabolism. Nutritional science also examines how the body responds to food. In other words, “nutritional science investigates the metabolic and physiological responses of the body to diet”.
As molecular biology, biochemistry and genetics advance, nutrition has become more focused on the steps of biochemical sequences through which substances inside us and other living organisms are transformed from one form to another – metabolism and metabolic pathways.