Food : Sources of food, Types of food, Tastes of food, Functions of food and Food nutrients - FOODZAQ

Hello friends, Welcome back to my blog FOODZAQ. Today we are going to discuss about Food : Sources of food, Types of food, Tastes of food, Functions of food and Food nutrients. Food is any substance which nourishes the body and fit to eat. It provides energy, growth and maintenance of the body.



Sources of Food

1. Plants

  • Many plants and plant parts are eaten as food and around 2,000 plant species are cultivated for food.
  • Seeds of plants are a good source of food for animals, including humans, because they contain the nutrients necessary for the plant's initial growth, including many healthful fats, such as omega fats. In fact, the majority of food consumed by human beings are seed-based foods. Edible seeds include cereals, nuts and oil seeds.
  • Fruits are the ripened ovaries of plants, including the seeds within.
  • Vegetables are a second type of plant matter that is commonly eaten as food. These include root vegetable, bulbs, leaf vegetables, stem vegetables and inflorescence vegetables.

2. Animals

  • Animals are used as food either directly or indirectly by the products they produce. 
  • Meat is an example of a direct product taken from an animal, which comes from muscle systems or from organs.
  • Food products produced by animals include milk produced by mammary glands,  which in many cultures is drunk or processed into dairy products (cheese, butter, etc.).
  • birds and other animals lay eggs, which are often eaten
  • Bees produce honey, a reduced nectar from flowers, which is a popular sweetener in many cultures.
  • Some cultures consume blood. sometimes in the form of blood sausage,  as a thickener for sauces, or in a cured, salted form for times of food scarcity, and others use blood in stews.

Types of Food

1. Adulterated Food

Adulteration is a legal term meaning that a food product fails to meet the legal standards. It can be also defined as adulteration is an addition of another substance to a food item in order to increase the quantity of the food item in raw form or prepared form, which may result in the loss of actual quality of food item. These substances may be either available food items or non-food items. Among meat and meat products some of the items used to adulterate are water or ice, carcasses, or carcasses of animals other than the animal meant to be consumed.

2. Camping food

Camping food includes ingredients used to prepare food suitable for and backpacking. The foods differ substantially from the ingredients found in a typical home kitchen. The primary differences relate to campers' and backpackers' special needs for foods that have appropriate cooking time, perishability, weight, and nutritional content.

3. Diet Food 

Diet food refers to any food or beverage whose recipe is altered to reduce fat, carbohydrates, abhor sugar in order to make it part of a weight loss program or diet. Such foods are usually intended to assist in weight loss or a change in body type, although bodybuilding supplements are designed to aid in gaining weight or muscle.

4. Finger Food

Finger food is food meant to be eaten directly using the hands, in contrast to food eaten with a knife and fork, spoon, chopsticks, or other utensils.

5. Fresh Food

Fresh food is food which has not been preserved and has not spoiled yet. For vegetables and fruits, this means that they have been recently harvested and treated properly postharvest; for meat, it has recently been slaughtered and butchered; for fish, it has been recently caught or harvested and kept cold.

6. Frozen Food

Freezing food preserves it from the time it is prepared to the time it is eaten. Since early times, farmers, fishermen, and trappers have preserved grains and produce in unheated buildings during the winter season.

7. Functional Food

A functional food is a food given an additional function (often one related to health-promotion or disease prevention) by adding new ingredients or more of existing ingredients.

8. Healthy diet

A healthy diet is a diet that helps to maintain or improve overall health. A healthy diet provides the body with essential nutrition: fluid, macronutrients, micronutrients, and adequate calories.

9. Live Food

Live food is living food for carnivorous or omnivorous animals kept in captivity; in other words, small animals such as insects or mice fed to larger carnivorous or omnivorous species kept either in a zoo or as a pet.

10. Medical Food

Medical foods are foods that are specially formulated and intended for the dietary management of a disease that has distinctive nutritional needs that cannot be met by normal diet alone.

11. Natural Food

Natural foods and "all-natural foods" are widely used terms in food labeling and marketing with a variety of definitions, most of which are vague.

12. Negative Calorie Food

A negative-calorie food is food that supposedly requires more food energy to be digested than the food provides. 

13. Organic Food

Organic food is food produced by methods that comply with the standards of organic farming. Standards vary worldwide, but organic farming in general features practices that strive to cycle resources, promote ecological balance, and conserve biodiversity. 

14. Peasant foods

Peasant foods are dishes specific to a particular culture, made from accessible and inexpensive ingredients, and usually prepared and seasoned to make them more palatable. They often form a significant part of the diets of people who live in poverty, or have a lower income compared to the average for their society or country.

15. Prison food

Prison food is the term for meals served to prisoners while incarcerated in correctional institutions. 

16. Seasonal Food

"Seasonal" here refers to the times of the year when the harvest or the flavor of a given type of food is at its peak. 

17. Shelf Stable Food

Shelf-stable food (sometimes ambient food) is food of a type that can be safely stored at room temperature in a sealed container.

18. Space Food

Space food is a type of food product created and processed for consumption by astronauts in outer space.

19. Traditional Food

Traditional foods are foods and dishes that are passed through generations or which have been consumed many generations.

20. Whole Food

Whole foods are plant foods that are unprocessed and unrefined, or processed and refined as little as possible, before being consumed.


Tastes of Food

Animals, especially humans have 5 different types of tastes. they are : sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami.

1. Sweet

Sweet regarded as most pleasant taste. sweetness is almost always caused by a type of simple sugar such as glucose or fructose or disaccharides such as sucrose.

2. Sour

Sourness is caused by the taste of acids, such as vinegar in alcoholic beverages. Sour food include citrus fruits like lime and lemon.

3. Salty

Saltiness is caused by alkali metal ions such as sodium and potassium. Salt is added to almost all foods to enhance flavor and for preservative action.

4. Bitter

Bitterness is a sensation often considered pungent taste. Unsweetened dark chocolate, caffeine, lemon rind and some types of fruits are known to be bitter.

5. Umami

Umami is the taste of glutamate, especially Mono Sodium Glutamate (MSG). It is characterized as savory, meaty and rich in flavor. 

Functions of Food

Food has physiological, psychological and social functions.

1. Physiological Functions

Act as a energy source 

Growth of body

Repair body tissues

Regulatory actions

Protective actions

2. Psychological Functions

People work and earn so that the have to feed themselves and their family.

It give a sense of security.

3. Social Functions

Food has significant role in various cultures and festivals

No get together is complete, without an elaborate meal.


Food nutrients 

Food nutrients are the constituents in food, that must be supply to body in suitable amount. 6 nutrients are very important to our body, they are

  1. Carbohydrates
  2. Proteins
  3. Fats
  4. Minerals
  5. Vitamins
  6. Water

Carbohydrates are the primary products of photosynthesis. They contain carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Cereals are the main sources of carbohydrate.

All the tissues in our body like muscles, blood, hair, skin, bones.. are made up of proteins. A protein unit contain Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. Foods like egg, milk, meat, fish and pulses are the main sources of protein.

Fat is the compound which is insoluble in water but soluble in solvents like chloroform, benzene...  Oil seeds, nuts, animal fat, milk... are the main sources of fat.

Minerals are the inorganic compound of food, that leave ash as residue when burned. Ca, P, Mg, Fe, S, Mn, Zn, I, Cu are the example of minerals.

Vitamins are the low molecular weight organic compound necessary in small amount in the diet of higher animals for normal growth, maintenance of health and reproduction. 

Water is vital for human existence. it is a caloric less compound of hydrogen and oxygen that found in every cells of the body.

Guys, Thank you for watching my blog FOODZAQ. I hopes you should understands Food : Sources of food, Types of food, Tastes of food, Functions of food and Food nutrients. If you have any suggestions or query please feel free to comment below. If you like this blog, you can also read my previous blogs on food science. Thank you again. Have a great day.

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