1

LECTURE 12

Article Food Security: The Challenge of Feeding 9 Billion People

Population is going up, so the global demand for food is increasing. We need sustainable,
equitable food security
Article Could Less Mean Mean More Food?
Eat less meat for more food security b/c this would free up a lot of plants to feed billions of
hungry people and gain a lot of good farm land

Chapter 06 Proteins: Amino Acids (continued)

Health Effects and Recommended Intakes of Protein

Protein-Energy Malnutrition (PEM): Malnutrition due to inadequate protein or energy or
both in the diet, most often striking children.
The most widespread malnutrition problem, PEM afflicts over 5000,000,000 children in the
world
Two forms of PEM: acute PEM and chronic PEM.
Acute PEM
A child that suddenly no longer has access to calories and protein
Protein-energy malnutrition caused by recent severe food restriction. Characteristic in
children: wasting, or thinness for height.
Chronic PEM
A child that has been w/o protein and adequate nutrition for quite some time
Characteristics in children: stunting or short height for age

PEM occurs in 2 forms: Marasmus and Kwashiorkor which differ in clinical features but
have many problems in common - Table 6-4

Marasmus (chronic PEM) is most common in children 6 to 18 months of age.

Child is apathetic a survival strategy to conserve energy; growth ceases.
Development is halted
Kwashiorkor: Ghanaian word meaning "the evil spirit that infects the first child
when the second child is born". This is a consequence of inadequate diet after
weaning. It develops principally as a result of protein deficiency, characterized by
swollen belly due to edema (swelling due to fluid retention), fatty liver, parasite load.
This happens because cells leak
Often, severely malnourished children suffer from Marasmus-Kwashiorkor mix.

Health Effects of Proteins

Over-consumption of protein offers NO benefits and may pose health risks.

Example: Calcium excretion rises as protein intake increases, suggesting that high protein
intake may accelerate calcium loss from bone, raising risk of osteoporosis

A high protein intake increases the work of the kidneys as they labor to excrete the excess
nitrogen as urea. For this reason, water intake should be increased if protein intake is high.
 2

Recommended Intakes of Protein:

Dietary protein is needed for 2 reasons:

1. Food protein is the only source of essential amino acids.

2. Food protein is the only practical source of nitrogen for making nonessential amino
acids and other nitrogen-containing biological molecules, such as the nucleotides in
DNA and RNA.
For persons over the age of 19, the RDA (recommended dietary allowance) for protein is: 0.8
g/kg, or 56 g/70 kg person

Athletes do NOT need to increase their protein intake, because most American diets provide
far more protein than needed.

What food servings provides 8g protein? 1 ounce of meat contains 8g of protein, as does 1 cup of
milk; 1 slice of bread contains 3g. A chicken breast contains 69g of protein. Americans on average eat
330g meat/day! (about lb meat/person)

Protein and Amino Acid Supplements: a bad idea

Muscle work builds muscle, protein supplements do not, and athletes don't need them. (And,
they are expensive!)

Amino acid supplements: the human body evolved under conditions of protein nutrition
where the proteins contain a mixture of all the 20 amino acids.

Supplements provide amino acids in high concentration and in unusual combinations the
body is not designed to handle, and amino acid supplements can be risky.

___________________________________________________________________________

Chapter 07 - Metabolism: Transformations and Interactions

This chapter answers the question: How do we obtain energy from food?

What is energy? Energy is a difficult-to-define, abstract concept

Dictionary:
1. the capacity of producing an effect;
2. an entity rated as the most fundamental of all physical concepts, usually
regarded as the power to do work

We observe the presence of energy by its effects on matter:

 3

Almost all living things depend on the sun's energy (energy in the form of light):

Green plants convert light energy into chemical energy that can be used to synthesize
carbohydrates from carbon dioxide and water, in a process called photosynthesis:
In terms of light-driven carbohydrate formation from CO2, photosynthesis can also be called
carbon dioxide fixation:
light energy + 6 CO2 + 6 H2O C6H12O6 + 6 O2

This process of using energy and water to "fix" carbon dioxide and form carbohydrate is the
source of all of the oxygen (O2) now present in our atmosphere.

In effect, we reverse the process of CO2 fixation when we use carbohydrates in food as our source of
energy:

Recall from Lecture 07 that carbohydrates such as glucose are broken down in the body to
produce carbon dioxide, water, and energy:

C6H12O6 + 6 O2 (cellular respiration) 6 CO2 + 6 H2O + energy

Much like cellulose [a glucose polymer] in wood releases energy in the form of heat when it
is burned in the fireplace.

An important difference is that our cells have biochemical mechanisms for capturing the energy
that is released. This energy is captured in the form of chemical energy, rather than allowing it
all to be lost as heat, the lowest form of energy.
Cells accomplish this remarkable feat by breaking up the oxidation of carbohydrate into a sequence
of 19 separate reactions, releasing the energy in small steps along the way. Similar rxns capture
energy from fat and protein.

Looking further at the reaction,

C6H12O6 + 6 O2 6 CO2 + 6 H2O + energy

We can see several features and anticipate certain requirements that must be met in order for this
process to take place within the orderly confines of a cell:

1. Hydrogens are removed from the carbon atoms and transferred to oxygen atoms to form
water. It turns out that this transfer isnt direct, so a hydrogen carrier is needed. The
hydrogen carrier for this purpose in cells is a chemical derivative of niacin (niacin is one
of the B vitamins) known as NAD+ when it's not loaded with hydrogen, and NADH
when it is (Another B vitamin is riboflavin). (NADH = Nicotinamide Adenine
Dinucleotide)

2. Energy is released in small amounts (a large and instantaneous release of energy w/in the
 4
cell would damage the cell) and carried to the many energy-requiring processes in the cell
by an energy carrier, a substance called ATP; its structure is shown in Figure 7-3
(ATP=Adenine TriPhosphate). Energy from catabolism is carried to anabolism by ATP.
The breakdown of one molecule of glucose in a cell drives the formation of more than 30
molecules of ATP.
A bomb calorimeter measure the amt of energy in a substance by measuring the amt of heat
released when the substance reacts w/ O2

Chemical Reactions in the Body

The sum of all the chemical reactions that go on in living cells is known as metabolism (from
the Greek word metabole, meaning "change").
The sum of the chemical changes that converts nutrients into energy and the chemically
complex molecules found in the cells. Metabolism consists of hundreds of enzyme rxns
organized into discrete pathways

Two fundamental kinds of metabolism take place in cells: catabolism and anabolism

Catabolism: metabolic reactions in which larger molecules are broken down to

smaller ones and are usually energy yielding.
Catabolic reactions include the breakdown of glycogen to glucose, the breakdown of
triglycerides to glycerol + fatty acids, and the breakdown of proteins to amino acids.
If cells need energy, any (or all) of these products - glucose, glycerol, fatty acids, or
amino acids - can be broken down to CO2 and H2O (and NH3) to release energy.

Anabolism (also referred to as biosynthesis): reactions in which smaller molecules

("building blocks") are put together to build larger molecules. Anabolic reactions
usually require energy.

Figure 7-2 compares anabolic and catabolic reactions.

Many of the molecules produced in catabolism serve as the building blocks for anabolism.

The transfer of energy in reactions (Energy Coupling)

When a chemical bond is broken in the process of catabolism, energy is released either in the form
of heat or it is captured via the creation of a new bond, or both.

Our body temperature is almost 100 F because of the heat released in metabolic reactions.
Often, as one compound is broken apart, some of the energy is released as heat and some of it is
Captured and used to put together another compound, such as ATP.

Coupled Reactions: When the energy released in the breakdown of one compound can be
used to
put together another compound, the two reactions together are called coupled reactions:

Reaction 1):
 5

Compound A smaller products + energy

Reaction 2):

Energy + smaller substances compound B

Coupling 1) and 2) allows the energy released in reaction 1) to drive reaction 2), the formation of
compound B.

The energy released in catabolism (which we can think of as a series of reactions of type 1) is used
to drive the formation of ATP from ADP + P (which is the common coupling reaction of type 2
used by cells).

The reaction ADP + P ATP requires energy, so we should write it as:

ADP + P + energy ATP

Of course, the breakdown of ATP to give ADP + P releases energy:

ATP + H2O ADP + P + energy

And, we can use this energy in productive ways, for example to drive an anabolic reaction to put
two smaller molecules together to make a bigger one, by coupling the energy-releasing reaction of
ATP breakdown to the energy-requiring anabolic reaction.

We now see the biological role of ATP:

Cells form ATP using the energy released in catabolic reactions and transfer this energy to
anabolic reactions by coupling such reactions with to the energy-releasing reaction of ATP
breakdown into ADP + P.

Figure 7-4 illustrates how ATP energy can be used to fuel the bodys work, such as put together a
new compound.
 6
A Typical Cell - Figure 7-1

Cells are highly organized entities, with each part or compartment dedicated to a specific metabolic
function.

Mitochondria are referred to as the "powerhouses" of cells because most of the ATP formation
from ADP + P occurs within them ppt slide

At an even finer level of organization, a specific enzyme is dedicated exclusively for each of the
thousands of reactions in metabolism.

Some enzymes need organic molecules known as coenzymes to help them carry out their reactions.

Many coenzymes contain particular vitamins as part of their structure.