Food group : Animal source

(2) Animal sources : Non-Vegetarian food :

It includes meat, chicken, eggs, fish, diary products.

A. Meat/ Beef /Pork:

It includes every edible part of animal body such as muscles, fat, heart, kidney, small intestines, tongue, brain, tiny bones, cartileges etc

Meat: It is the meat from lambs, sheeps and most widely used as food in East Asia, Southeast Asia and Middle East.

Beef: It is the meat from bovines usually domistic cattle such as bull, cow, buffollow etc.
Beef is the principal meats used in Europe, Americain, Austrelia and also in Africa.

Beef is not commonly eaten in India as it is taboo for Hindus and also for Buddhists.

Pork : Pork is the meat from domestic pigs and used as food worldwide.

B Birds:
Such as chicken, duck, turkey, piegeons are used as food.

C Fish :
Fish are important source of human food world over. There are thousands of varieties of edible fish. Fish are either obtained from sea, fresh water or cultivated in ponds.

D Eggs :
Eggs of hens, duck, fish are commonly eaten but eggs of gull, penguin, crocodile, ostrich etc are also eaten.

Birds , animals and fish are cultivated for eggs. Eggs are eaten raw, boiled, cookes, scrambles. They are also part of many delicious sweet dishes such as cakes, puddings, custurds etc.

E Milk & Milk products:
Milk and milk products are important part of human food. Cattles such as cow, buffellow, sheep are domisticated for milk. Milk of Raindeer, also used.

Milk is used most as a drink either as milk or part of tea / coffee.

Milk products such as cream, curd, buttermilk, butter, cheese , ghee are regular part of everyday meals. Milk is also stored as milk powder.

Food Groups : Plant source

Depending on the direct source of food, all foods are classified in two groups such as

1) Plant sources : Vegetarian food :
These can again be subclassified as

A. Grains:
This class of food includes foods derived from cereal crops such as
Wheat, Rices, Maize, Jawar( white millet/ sorghum) Bajra ( pearl millet), Barley, Rye, Oat, Fonio( Africa), Quinoa ( grown in Andes)

Grains supply food energy in the form of starch and also some proteins.
Whole grains also supply fiber and essential fatty acids and other necessary nutrients

B Pulses: ( legume)

This class of food include the dry grains whidch are obtained from the pods of the leguminous crops.Each pod may contain one to twelve grains or seeds of variable size, shape and color within the pod.

This includes dry beans ( kidney beans, green gram,black gram, moth bean, lima bean, rice bean, scarlet bean), Dry broad beans ( broad bean, horse bean, field bean), Dry peas ( garden peas), Cheakpea( bengal gram / chana), cowpea ( chavali), pigeon pea( arhar/ doovar), lentil( masoor), Vetch, lupins, winged bean, velvet beans.
Legumes / pulses are rich source of proteins.

C Fruits :

In botanical term friut is a ripened ovary together with the seeds of a flowering plant. If this defination is applied then many grains, vegetables, & nuts are fruits.

But when discussing the fruit as food group , it usually refers to those commonly eaten plant fruits that are sweet, fleshy such as, apples, orages, sweet lime, plum, guava, pineapple, fig, mulberry, osage-orange, and breadfruit. banana, grapes, grapefruit, , peach, pear, kiwifruit, mango, watermelons etc.

Fruits are rich source of fiber and vitamins. .

D Vegetables :

Vegetable is also a culinery term describing the edible part of the plant which is not sweet and can be subgrouped as .

(i)Fruit Vegetables : Botanical fruits of some plants are not sweet but they are eaten after cooking and termed as fruits vegetables.
Examples : pumpkin, capsicum,cucumber, eggplant, tomato, gourd, white gourd,

(ii)Leafy Vegetables :
Leafy vegetables as suggested are the plants leaves which are eaten as vegetables. They are also called as green vegetables or pot herbs. Leaves also are eaten with tender petioles and shoots.

There are nearly thousand species of plants with edible leaves. Leafy vegetables usually are short herbaceous plant such as lettuce and spinach, Kale, Celery etc.

E. Liquids: such as tea, coffee, coco, etc

F. Oils: Vegetable oils

G. Processed food: such as Tofu made from Soya milk.

H. Miscellaneous : Nuts, Dry fruits and spices.

Source of Food

Source of all food is the green kingdom i.e. plants.

Plants prepare their food by the process called " Photosynthesis"

Photosynthesis is a chemical process by which glucose is produced in the plant leaves and this reaction also releases oxygen as by product. Both these elemetns are essential for all life to go on.

The process of photosynthesis takes place in plants leaves and in some algae.

The raw material required for photosynthesis is water and carbon-di-oxide.

Roots of the plants absorb water and salts from the soil and deliver it to plant leaves.

Undsersurface of the leaves have very tiny pores( holes) which abosorb carbon-di-oxide from the air.

The plant leaves have special cells called 'chloroplast' which produces a green pigment called 'chlorophyll'.

The name is derived from two Greek words : 'chloros' meaning green and 'phyllon' meaning leaf.

This chlorophyll absorbs light energy from the sun. Hence a leaf may be viewed as a solar energy collector full of photosynthetic cells. Plants are the only photosynthetic organisms to have leaves (and not all plants have leaves). Thus plants are the only site of food production.

When the plant leaf has all the raw material ( meaning water and carbon-di-oxide), a chemical process starts which combines six molecules of water and six molecules of carbon-di-oxide to produce glucose.

Since the energy for reaction is coming from light energy, this process is called Photosynthesis.

The Photosynthesis reaction can be simply put as follows.

6 molecules of water + 6 molecules of carbon-di-oxide ---------Light energy ---------> one molecule of glucose + 6 molecules of oxygen.

i.e.. 6H2O + 6CO2 ----------> C6H12O6+ 6O2

This glucose is utilized by plants as their food and oxygen is released in air.

Sugar which remains extra after the requirement of plant is stored in plants and it becomes the source of food for all the animal kingdom. Vegetarians get their food directly from plants and non-vegetarians get their food indirectly from plants as these plants are eaten by animals used as non-vegetarian food source.

This relation is well explained in natural food chain shown below.

Now we know from where all food comes, no matter whether one is Vegetarian or non-vagetarian ...

What is Healthy Diet?

Whatever the food you eat daily is called your daily diet.

People have different food habits, different cooking methods, eat different food items as per local availability but the daily diet of majority of people constitutes a combination of such foods as cereals, pulses, vegetables, fruits, nuts, milk, cheese, meat, eggs etc.

One eats these foods to grow, to get energy to work, , to stay healthy and to heal. One will grow, stay healthy, will get energy to move on and also will heal only if one gets the right amounts of nutrients required from daily diet.

Whatever the food items one eats, if it provides the right amounts of all nutrients for all the needs of one's body then it is 'Healthy Diet'

AS the road to good health is built with the food one eats, nutritious the food stronger will be the road to healthier body.

Therefore, designing a Healthy Diet' is very crucial for the health of the body.

Now any health conscious individual naturally will have next question in his/her mind..

How to design Healthy Diet?

To get answer to this question one must know everything about the food one eats.

So let start and learn about food, right from the begining...

Healthy Diet : Need

More and more studies about foods, diets are going on and their findings are suggestive that certain diets and foods either prevent or cause certain diseases. Nor only that evidence is also accumulating to suggest that certain diets or foods also have immediate therapeutic benefit in certain situations.
In addition, as people are getting more and more information about foods, about value of proper nutrition to stay fit, prevent disease or heal some ailments, they are becoming more and more anxious.

The result is that more and more people have started realizing the role of food they eat in keeping their health. Though many are aware of this fact, in reality very few really give a serious thought or spend time on designing their diet which will promote their health.

Culprits are many like fast track life with all the comforts of modern life leading to physical inactivity, reliance on readily available precooked canned / packed food, mushrooming of fast food joints with their display of attractive mouth watering dishes.

In addition they are also getting confused because of bombardment of information and by sometime conflicting opinions encountered.

In this situation any health conscious individual will have certain questions regarding his/her diet and health.

1. What is healthy diet?
2. What are the nutrients I require to stay healthy?
3. How much quantities of these nutrients do I require?
4. From which food will I get these nutrients ?
5. What the foods which will provide me sufficient quantities of nutrients?
6. How much nutrients are present in any individual food items?
7. To get greatest of benefit from my daily diet, how do I know what to eat and in what quantities?
8. How do I know what foods to avoid?
9. How do I know what food items to combine to get maximum benefit of from them?

f he gets the answers to these questions, it will definitely enable him to make his own choices of healthy food.

An attempt is made here just to answer these questions in scientific way so as to enable people to select correct food items, plan their daily meal, include the items they needed most.

Mens Sana In Corpore Sano

In his answer to the question of what people should desire in life, Roman poet Juvenal wrote this now famous Latin words in his Satire X .

Original connotation of his phrase is that health of mind and body is good in itself and something to be rightly desired, as opposed to beauty, wealth or power.

Over the time his phrase has come to mean and often translated as
"A sound mind in a sound body."

As Human body is a vehicle for human soul, the health of human mind and soul depends on health of his body. Only a healthy body will harbor healthy mind and soul.

Man gets only one life. He too gets only one body. The life must be enjoyed and to enjoy life human needs a healthy mind. One has to desire for healthy body and healthy mind. Body has to be cared and provided for.

Just as human mind, human body is very remarkable. It adapts to any situation be it favorable or adverse. But then the human body is like any machine which requires high value energy to go on. Like any machine living body too is subject to its wear and tear. It too needs repair. To build itself, to get energy to move, to provide for wear and tear, to get itself repaired body needs its quota of high value fuel. The fuel of human body is nutrients which must be provided through daily food.

Just as any machine will not work efficiently without its required fuel, human body too will fail to work efficiently without its nutrients.
Even though body has great adaptability to adverse situations, without its nutrients it too will not work efficiently and ultimately will stop if quality nutrients are not provided to generate energy.

So the bottom line is that to stay fit, to stay dynamic, to provide for body’s wear / tear/ repair one must have proper nutrients. Since one gets these nutrients only from the food, the choice of ones food matters most in staying healthy and fit.