What is nutrition?

Nutrition refers to the process by which your body takes in and utilizes food to support growth, maintenance, and overall health. It encompasses a wide range of topics, including how the body digests food, absorbs nutrients, and metabolizes these nutrients to produce energy, build and repair tissues, and regulate bodily functions. Understanding nutrition is essential for making informed dietary choices that contribute to optimal health.

The other options focus on related but distinct aspects. The study of food distribution deals with how food is moved and accessed by populations, which is important but not the definition of nutrition itself. Cooking techniques for healthy meals relate to how food is prepared but do not capture the broader biological processes involved in nutrition. The preparation of food for consumption also touches on an important aspect of food but lacks the encompassing view of how food impacts the body's functions, which is fundamentally what nutrition involves.