They're more than vitamins, though people often think they are the same thing.

Carbohydrates, proteins (which are made up of amino acids ), fats, minerals, vitamins, and water are all nutrients—absorbable components of foods—and necessary for good health. Nutrients are necessary for energy, organ function, food utilization, and cell growth.

The Difference Between Micronutrients and Macronutrients

Micronutrients, like vitamins and minerals, do not themselves provide energy. The macronutrients—carbohydrates, fat, and protein—do that, but only when there are sufficient micronutrients to release them.

With nutrients, less is often the same as more.

The amount of micronutrients and macronutrients you need for proper health

is vastly different—but each is important.

How Nutrients Get to Work

The body simplifies nutrients in order to utilize them.

Nutrients basically work through digestion. Digestion is a process of continuous chemical simplification of materials that enter the body through the mouth. Materials are split by enzymatic action into smaller and simpler chemical fragments, which can then be absorbed through walls of the digestive tract—an open-ended muscular tube, more than thirty feet long, which passes through the body—and finally enter the bloodstream.

Your Body Needs Togetherness

Vitamins alone are not enough.

As important as vitamins are, they can do nothing for you without minerals.

I like to call minerals the Cinderellas of the nutrition world, because, though

very few people are aware of it, vitamins cannot function and cannot be

assimilated without the aid of minerals. And though the body can synthesize

some vitamins, it cannot manufacture a single mineral.