Food and Nutrition ESSAYS

 Spinach, cauliflower, carrot, potato, tomato, bhindi, french beans and other vegetables are all known to us. Are you aware of the fact that vegetables are important for us, that they improve our eye-sight, make our skin soft and protect us from many diseases? They are the most in expensive protective foods one can buy. Get our tendency is to neglect to use them daily in our diet. Vegetables many give variety to our diet. They make our meals more colourful, tasty and easily digestible. In spite of these benefits we consume very few vegetables. This is probably because we are not aware of the many benefits we can get from these vegetables. The knowledge about vegetables is very important for our health. We should know which ones are best suited for us. We must also know how best to buy, store and cook them. Vegetables are important to us as a source of essential nutrients like minerals and Vitamins. These help to keep the body healthy. Vegetables contribute variety, colour, flavour ...

As we have read earlier, eggs and flesh foods like meat, fish, etc. are very good sources of protein and belong to basic food group. Therefore they form an important part of the diet. These foods are required for body-building and are particularly important during periods of growth like childhood, adolescence and pregnancy. These foods are very expensive and it may not be possible for you to consume them in large amounts. However, we must try and include some of these foods in our daily diet unless one is a strict vegetarian. As presented earlier, eggs are a very important part of our diet, since they are a good source of protein, iron, vitamin A and other B-complex vitamins. While purchasing eggs a few simple tests may help us determine their freshness. Eggs are easy to use in our daily meals and a number of preparations like omelettes, custards, etc. can be made at home. Flesh foods are the meat of various animals, birds and fish. These are rich in protein, iron and B-complex vitamin...

Did you drink milk as such or take it in coffee or tea this morning? Our elders tell us that it is good for our health. Well, they are right. Milk contains almost all the nutrients as you have read in previous classes. These are: proteins, fats, carbohydrates, minerals and vitamins. You may have realised already that milk is the first food for the young ones of most of the animal species including man. You will be surprised to know that mother’s milk alone is able to meet the baby’s nutritive needs for the first few months of its life. No amount of commercial milk food can replace mother’s milk. Milk can be obtained from different animals for our consumption, the most common ones being the cow, buffalo and goat. It is not necessary to take milk as it is. There are a number of other preparations made from milk which you must be commonly consuming such as curds, paneer, cheese and khoya, etc. Milk is a very nutritious food and is suitable for every age group—the young and the old alike. ...

Pulses are an essential constituent of the Indian diet. All of us include some form of pulse in our diet. Rajmah, chana, besan, moong, arhar are all examples of frequently eaten pulses. Besides being good sources of proteins they are also rich in minerals and vitamins. Nuts and oilseeds are also very nutritious. We may not be eating them in very large amounts due to the high cost of these food items. However, groundnuts are commonly consumed and provide certain nutrients to our body. Pulses are a very important part of our diet. They provide protein, iron and certain vitamins. Since a number of pulses are available and they can be cooked in several different ways, it is easy to consume sufficient amounts of these foods in our diet. Nuts and oilseeds are also important because of their rich nutrient content. They are relatively expensive and therefore difficult to include in the diet. However, a variety of ways are suggested to include these in our diet.

 You would have enjoyed eating sweet preparations like burfi, gulabjamuns, rasgullas, ice-creams. These sweets and desserts form an important part of any feast or social functions like birthdays or marriages. All these preparations have sugar as an ingredient. Your tea, coffee, soft drinks and other beverages, also contain sugar. The main sweetening agent all over the world is sugar. This is made from sugarcane or sugarbeets. In our country sugarcane is used for making sugar, while in European countries, especially West Germany, sugar beets are used. Which ever source is used for the production of sugar, the product obtained is the same. Our country is one of the largest producers of sugar. Sugar is produced from sugarcane in the factories. In brief the process of making sugar is: the sugarcane is crushed. The juice so obtained has some impurities. It is then refined and concentrated to form sugar crystals. In our villages even now a large quantity of sugarcane is used to produce j...

We have studied the functions and composition of food and its classification into various food groups. We will now learn about the nutritive value of various foods, their selection and use in our day-to-day meals to add to our understanding of foods. As we all know, chapatis, puris, paranthas, bread, rice, idli, dosa are some of the food items that we consume daily. These are made from cereals which are an important part of our diet. You may already know that cereals and millets are seeds of the grass family. The main cereal grains used as food are rice, jowar, bajra, barley, maize, ragi and kodri. We also use them to make flour, bread, breakfast foods, extruded products and various kinds of starches. Cereals form the bulk of our diets because:  they are a source of energy and other important nutrients to the body,  their cost of production is low and so they are not expensive,  they have a bland, mild taste which is acceptable to young and old people alike,  these combine well wit...