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Your daily calorie requirements?

Our bodies have certain daily calorie requirements to provide us with all our nutritional needs. As we all know, our bodies are like finely tuned machines and work on delicately balanced systems.

However, if we regularly miss out on our daily requirements we will begin to develop health ailments which range from the physical to the mental, and may eventually die. The more we know about our daily requirements, the more likely we are to meet them, ensuring a healthy mind and body.

Our daily requirements can be catagorized into two basic groups. One aspect of our needs is the right amount of energy or calories, which acts as fuel for the machine.

The second, and equally important part of our normal needs is a selection of chemicals, which we call vitamins and minerals, that create the chemical reactions that make the systems run. Most of these things we need to get from outside of us, usually through what we eat. This is why nutritionists have separated out our food into catagories, or food groups.

The food in the different groups largely provide us with different things. For example, carbohydrates like bread or pasta provide us with a lot of energy. Eating these foods stokes our energy stores. On the other hand, lots of vitamins and minerals are found in certain meats, fruits and vegetables.

These vitamins and minerals become the building blocks for our body's chemical processes. By being aware of the different properties of foods, and consciously eating a range of foods across the food groups, we can be sure that our bodies are running on top form, and ward off illnesses.