It might only take you a few minutes to finish a meal but it takes your body around 12 hours before it has completely digested the food.

The human body needs iron to help perform a number of important functions. Iron helps carry oxygen to parts of your body in the form of haemoglobin. Not having enough can lead to iron deficiency and symptoms such as weakness and fatigue. Examples of iron rich foods include red meat, fish, chick peas, beans and lentils.

Antibiotics can be useful in fighting off bacteria but they are ineffective against viruses, this is because bacteria and virus are completely different, both having unique characteristics that need specialized treatments.

Around 7 million people die every year from food poisoning out of a total of around 70 million cases. Careful food preparation and storage is vital in order to avoid dangerous toxins, viruses and bacteria.

Food allergies are fairly common amongst adults and even more so among children. Around 2% of adults and 8% of children suffer from some type of food allergy where the immune system makes a mistake and thinks a certain food protein is dangerous and attacks it. Well known food allergies can include unwanted reactions to gluten, seafood and peanuts.

In developing and under-developed parts of the world the quality water and pollution can give rise to dangerous diseases and bacteria such as cryptosporidium and e coli.

Obesity can increase the chances of developing diseases such as Type-2 diabetes and heart disease.

In recent times there has been a drop in the amount of physical activity both adults and children do. Some of the reasons for this include new technologies that require less physical labour and increased time watching TV and sitting in front of the computers. It has been suggested that at least 60% of the world’s population doesn’t do enough exercise.