A balanced diet
A balanced diet contains all seven food components (carbohydrate, protein, fat, vitamins, minerals, fibre and water) in the right amounts for your body. Too little or too much of any of them is malnutrition.
By the end of this page you can
- Explain what makes a diet balanced, and how diet helps vegetarians, diabetics and people with high blood pressure
- Give the role of each food component and what happens without it
- Trace how a protein-poor diet leads to kwashiorkor
- Define malnutrition, kwashiorkor, scurvy, anaemia and obesity
- Suggest diet changes for a named condition, with reasons
Goals tick themselves off as you try the activities below.
Photo: Xaymacan, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Cropped, resized, JPEG q66.
One plate, many components: starch in the yam and dumplings, protein in the saltfish, vitamins, minerals and fibre in the callaloo.
How often it shows up in past papers
Paper 1 counts come from our past-paper bank of CSEC Biology Paper 1s. Paper 2 is not included yet.
What you eat, and what it does
Balance, choices, and two diseases that diet helps control. Tap each card.
Each component, its job
Tap a component for its job, sources and shortage disease.
What does it do?
Tap a component to see its job.
Needs vary: teenagers need more protein than older adults, a cane cutter more energy than an office worker, males usually more energy than females, and pregnant women extra iron and calcium.
How a child develops kwashiorkor
From the change in diet to recovery: drag or tap each card into its slot.
What change starts it?
Seven terms to know cold
Say what each term means before you flip the card. Name the missing nutrient with each deficiency disease.
Six quick questions, then a real one
Pick an answer to see why it’s right or wrong.
Bleeding gums are a sign of too little
A diet short of iron leads to
A child with a swollen belly and thin limbs, eating mainly cassava, most likely lacks
Who needs the most energy each day?
A person with high blood pressure should cut down most on
Vegetarians can get all the amino acids they need by
exam style · 4 marks
An overweight adult has high blood pressure. Suggest FOUR changes to the person’s diet and give a reason for each.
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Practice questions are written by My V.I.P. Academy. They are not official CXC papers.