 Hello and welcome to CNM's naturopathic nutrition year one. My name is Rhianne Jones and today I'm going to take you through the phyto-nutrients lecture. So let's get started. So let's start off by looking at the learning outcomes. Now during the course of this lecture I'm going to take you through what phyto-nutrients are and how they're classified. Now you'll also learn lots of new key names and key terms during this lecture which we've detailed here on the slide. So we've got catchkins and epicatchkins for example which we find in things like green tea and I'll teach you about how we find these in plants and actually how they're produced. We've got other things which give fruits and vegetables their colour like the purple, the blue, the proanthocyanins we're going to learn about which are important components of plants that give them their rich colour. We're also going to learn about other compounds that the plants produce according to its environment such as things like phytosterols which are the lipid or the fat of the plant. So I'm going to take you through all of this today as we work through all of these learning outcomes. Now this lecture is all about phyto-nutrients. Now phyto-nutrients are chemicals that are produced by the plant according to its environment which explains why sometimes they're called phyto-chemicals. It's essentially the same thing. So the plants will produce these compounds depending on its environment essentially to protect itself and also as a normal byproduct of metabolism. But we get benefit from these compounds as human beings and some of the benefits are antioxidant properties. Now antioxidants are very good for inflammation and you've learnt about that already and we'll be covering that in much more detail today. But one of the important things is that all of these phytochemicals, phyto-nutrients that plants produce have different colours and therefore different properties. So we consume them because of their taste and their colour but actually all of the different colours bring different benefits. So the first thing we need to say and understand here is that that's why we always want to have colour on our plate. So I'm always telling my clients in clinic that we need to see rotation of fruits and vegetables because the different colours will bring different phyto-nutrients to the plate and therefore different benefits to us. So we know that they are helpful for fighting disease so we've talked about them being antioxidants but they're really important for aging and to help to keep us well so to fight disease. Now there's many many phyto-nutrients so we're covering just a handful really during the course of this lecture but actually there's more than 25,000 of them and lots of subcategories and subdivisions. So it really is an endless exploration of all the things that plants actually produce that are beneficial for us. Now we find these in fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, spices and herbs and we need to include all of these compounds in our diet so that we get all these health benefits. Now what I would say is that if you think about vitamins and minerals, vitamins and minerals are classified as essential for health. But interestingly phyto-nutrients aren't but what we do know is that when people don't consume these phyto-nutrients through these food groups, fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, that we see that their health declines and they're much more at risk of getting sick. So is it because we just don't know about the extent of how amazing they are so they're not deemed as essential or is it that we know that when people just don't consume them that their body can't function in the same way. So hopefully that question will be answered for you today as we move through the next few slides. So you don't miss any future content. To learn more about CNM or its courses head to www.naturopathy-uk.com