Diet and the impact of diet on metabolism are something that is generally ignored in the education of health and medical professionals.  The lesson that you are about to undertake is the audio recording and presentation that directly comes from a college lecture that I give to my nursing and allied health students in their human anatomy and physiology course.  The purpose of the lecture is to provide the information so that when you are asked to provide an opinion or suggestion for how one's diet will impact metabolism and body composition you can do so from an informed position.  In this effort, every attempt is made throughout the lecture to provide the information from a scientific perspective and not the dogmatic perspective that we tend to get into heated arguments about.

The lesson here is broken into distinct talks that cover smaller portions of each major topic presented in a 90-minute lecture to nursing and allied health students.  The first portion of the lesson deals with the issues of Calories and introduces the idea of Caloric balance and Basal Metabolic Rate.  The next portion goes through the various macronutrients and recommendations for carbohydrates, lipids and amino acids (proteins) based on energetic and metabolic necessities and utilization.  Finally, we will examine some of the historical perspectives of diets and then what we need to know to help ourselves and others determine what, when, and how much we should be eating.