Nutrition

Nutrition

Nutrition is just a complicated word for something we all like doing: eating!
 

All animals, including humans, eat to live.

Humans take in food at their mouths, munch it with their teeth, and the teeth break it down so it can be taken into the stomach. All the nutritious bits of the food are absorbed into the body through the intestine, and the rest comes out the other end!

Chewing is very important - it starts the process that breaks down our food. Most mammals have teeth to chew their food.

Their teeth are adapted to their diets, but they usually have some combination of the three types of teeth that are found in human mouths: incisors, canines and molars.

 

 

Child eating corn
 

 

 

About this resource
 

Science topic: Animals, including humans

Key Stage: KS1. KS2

Type: Information, Activity

Keywords: nutrition, food, teeth, incisors, canines, molars, omnivores, herbivores, carnivores

 

Look at the human teeth below. Can you identify the incisors, canines and molars?

Click on the picture to see if you are right!
 

https://view.genial.ly/60911974dfc6c00d5e36256e

Humans are omnivores. 

They eat a bit of everything, and have all three types of teeth to chew their food. But lots of animals are not omnivores.

Some animals eat meat and only meat - thay are called carnivores.

Carnivores have well developed canine teeth - for tearing and slicing meat.

Other animals eat only plants - they are called herbivores.

Herbivores often have well developed molars or incisors for grinding and cutting plant food.

 

 

 

Have a look at the teeth below. Can you guess the diets of these mammals?

Remember incisors are for cutting plant food, molars are for grinding grass and other plants, and canines are for slicing and tearing meat.

 

 

 

https://view.genial.ly/6091438f5ef2d60daf617fac

 

What type of food do you think the owners of these teeth ate?

 

 

Aardwolf skull
Barbirusa skull
Bearcat skull
Canadian beaver skull
Spinner dolphin skull
Indo-Malaysian fruit bat skull
Shark jaw
Red fox skull
Horse skull
Hedgehog skull
Malayan tapir skull
Tiger skull
Walrus skull
Orangutan skul
Lion skull

Another way of finding out what an animal eats is by looking at its gut. 

The shape and size of an animal's intestines and stomach tell us a lot about its diet.

Did you know koalas have incredibly long guts?

This is because they only eat eucalyptus leaves, which contain very few nutrients - they have to have a very long intestine so they can get as much goodness out of the leaves as they can.

 

https://view.genial.ly/60914c2ba71fe70d82ac304f

  

Cows have a similar problem.

Grass isn't too good to eat - so they need a long time to process their food. How do they solve their problem?

Simple - they just have four stomachs:

  1. the rumen
  2. the reticulum
  3. the omasum
  4. the abomasum

 

illustration of cow with visible four stomachs

 

There's more to learn abotu Mrs Nerg