Life Cycle

During life we go through five different stages. At each stage we need a different type of nutrition to keep us healthy. These stages are infancy, childhood, adolescence, adults and older adults. Different nutrition is recommended for people at different ages, for example pregnant women need different nutrients to breastfeed (West, 2000:184). The body needs nutritious food to repair, build, and maintain body tissues. Also different factors affect the amount of nutrients that you need. Body size, composition, age, gender, activity level and state of health are some of these factors (West, 2000:186).
Infants and toddlers need different nutrients than adults do because they are growing and developing bones and tissues. Iron, protein and calcium support the growth of muscle tissues and other body tissues (West, 2000: 198). Breast milk is viewed as the ideal food for infants. The contain nutrients too meet the specific needs of an infant. Cereal is also important because it is one o...