9781422287866 Building a Healthy Diet with the 5 Food Groups

Chapter 2

Why Do I Need to Eat a Variety of Foods? H umans, like every other living thing, need certain things to survive and grow. We need food and water to stay alive. If you don’t eat, you don’t live! We can’t just eat anything, though, and expect to live our best. People need the right foods to stay healthy. The five food groups contain all the things we need to live and be healthy. NUTRIENTS FOR LIFE Food has substances called nutrients in them. You can probably already name some nutri- ents, like calcium and vitamin C. You can’t see the nutrients in food. Nutrients are really, really small. But just because they’re small, doesn’t mean they’re not important. They are the reason we eat food in the first place!