Improve Your English Vocabulary: Diet, Health, and Nutrition

Essential vocabulary about nutrition and health in English. Are you planning to start a diet? Looking to gain or lose weight? In this lesson, we will cover a wide variety of words, including ‘ingest’, ‘digest’, ‘arteries’, ‘carbohydrate’, ‘fat’, ‘fiber’, ‘sodium’, ‘metabolism’, and more. I will teach you which nutrients are good for your body (such as proteins) and which ones are bad (like trans fats), and I’ll explain exactly what calories are. Plus, you will discover how the body breaks down food into energy. The vocabulary you will learn is very useful because it ties into so many other subjects, like anatomy, biology, and fitness.

Now, watch these other healthy vocabulary lessons I've done:

1. Vocabulary of your body & organs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNk73qAY01I&list=PLxYD9HaZwsI5C0d8CivHvoI_-0rs8XMfc&index=5

2. Medical vocabulary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW22_OnpS5Y&list=PLxYD9HaZwsI5C0d8CivHvoI_-0rs8XMfc&index=72

TRANSCRIPT

Hi. Welcome to www.engvid.com. I'm Adam. In today's video, we're going to talk about: nutrition. So, we're going to get a little introduction into how to maintain a proper diet, what you're eating, what you should eat, what you shouldn't eat, how much you should eat, etc. And we're going to especially look at the different types of nutrients that you should put into your body if you want to grow, if you want to maintain, if you want to lose weight, etc.

So, we're going to start with the basic process. Okay? Eating, drinking, all these things. We're going to look at these two verbs: "ingest" and "digest". Okay? So, when we're talking about nutrition, we're talking about what you're taking into your body. So, when you ingest something, when you ingest nutrients, you are swallowing them or absorbing them. So, "swallow" basically means chew and swallow. Right? So, "chew" is break down the food in your mouth, and then you swallow it; you take it in and push it down into your stomach. You can also absorb nutrients. For example, we absorb vitamin D from the sun through our skin. Okay? So, you can absorb or swallow - means you're ingesting your nutrients.

In your stomach, your stomach produces juices-they're mostly acids-that break down the food and separate it into its different components that can then be absorbed in the intestines. So, the intestines are the long tubes that go back and forth from your stomach until the waste comes out, and inside all the good nutrients get absorbed into the blood, and pushed around to all the parts of the body that need them.

So, let's look specifically at the nutrients that you're going to need. Now, first thing you need to know about nutrients are... Is that they are not synthesized naturally by the body. So, the body produces a lot of the things it needs, but some things it just can't synthesize; it can't put together to create a new nutrient. So, these nutrients need to be ingested; they need to be put into your body, basically. Right? And we have: Carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins, and minerals. And these are considered essential. You can live without carbohydrates, but you can't live without these nutrients. Okay?

So, what are these? So, "carbohydrates"-we call them "carbs" for short-these are the nutrients that provide your body energy, especially for your brain. Okay? They come from fruits and vegetables, grains... So, for example, bread, which comes from wheat or whatever other kind of grain, has a lot of carbohydrates. Comes from sugars, and starches, like rice, etc. So, all of these give your body a lot of energy. Now, you also get energy from the other minerals... From the other nutrients as well, but carbohydrates are a very good source. The problem is they can also lead to weight gain, if you don't control the intake. Okay? We can also say: "intake of nutrients". Basically means take in; intake. Okay? So, carbohydrates.

Then we have proteins. "Proteins" are the nutrients that help create and build tissues and muscles in your body. So, when a child is growing and getting bigger, it's the proteins that help create that growth. It's good for bones, and muscles, and tissues, etc. Proteins are made of amino acids, which are the building blocks of protein, and there are many different types of amino acids. And these days you can take pills specifically with the amino acids that you want for specific things. So, nowadays, you see a lot of guys or girls - big, big muscles, and you think: "Oh, steroids." Right? Not necessarily; they could just be taking a lot of amino acids, and exercising a lot, and growing their muscles and looking much bigger. So, proteins are basically the building blocks.

"Fats" are the nutrients that store energy. So, if you eat too many carbohydrates, the fats will store that energy as sugar, and that's why you get fat. That's why it's called... When a person is a little bit heavy, we sometimes say: "Fat". […]