HFE200 General Nutrition

This course is an introduction to nutrition constituting a platform enabling the student to specialize in both animal, aquaculture and human nutrition. It also formulates the platform for further studies of specific feed/food types and feed/food technology. The course is broad in this sense, and may be divided into 5 sub-topics:

1) Feed, food, nutrients and analyses, 2) Digestive tract, digestion and absorption, 3) Appetite regulation and intermediary turnover, 4) Energy and protein value of feed and food, and 5) specialization in livestock nutrition, aquaculture or human nutrition

Main aims: To acquire fundamental knowledge of the macro and micro nutrients, their chemical structure, characteristics, nutrient value, digestion and main functions in the body. The student will also acquire fundamental knowledge of feed/food types, main feed sources and principles for their evaluation.

Partial aims: After finishing the course the students should be able to explain structure, classification and properties of the main nutrients, and why it is important to understand the composition of the food. In addition, the students should be able to explain digestion and absorption of the main nutrients, the minerals and the vitamins, in addition to intermiediary metabolism of substrates from the digestion process, characteristics of the digestive tract, and principles for evaluation of ingrediens and rations/diettary regimes.