Food and Nutrition ESSAYS

You might have eaten some delicious apples of Kashmir, lichis of Dehradun, Langra and Dussehri mangoes of U.P. and oranges of Nagpur. Our country has in addition to the above a variety of fruits like apricots, grapes, pineapples, peaches, strawberries, plums, pears, guavas, papayas, banana, jack fruit and melons. Let us now see what fruits are. Fruits are the seed bearing parts of the plants consisting of edible tissue surrounding the seeds. The edible part is juicy, pulpy, fleshy, sweet or sweet-sour in taste. Most fruits have a ripened seed or seeds enclosed in them. Unlike vegetables most fruits can be eaten with minimum nutrient losses. Fruits are a great gift of nature to mankind. They are delicious, nutritious, ready-to eat foods. They have a nice flavour and texture. Fresh fruits have an attractive colour. Think, for example, about the colour of ripe yellow mangoes or rosy red apples. Children may sometimes be averse to milk and other nutritious foods. But they relish fruits ver...

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.

We know that carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins, minerals and water are the nutrients present in the food. But these nutrients are not present in the same amount in various foods. Some of these are present in larger amounts and others in smaller amounts. All these nutrients are important as they have varied functions in the body. Here we are discussing about definitions of macronutrient  and micronutrient, and the functions and sources of Macronutrients. We know that food contains various nutrients which have very specific functions to perform. Macronutrients are present in larger amounts in food while micronutrients are present in smaller amounts. Carbohydrates, fats, proteins and water are macronutrients. Carbohydrates mainly provide energy and form the bulk of the diet. They are found in cereals, roots and tubers, sugar, jaggery, fruits, etc. Fats are concentrated sources of energy and are present in our diet in the form of ghee, vanaspati and oils, nuts and oilseeds, milk ...

Food in an integral part of our lives. We cannot live without food for more than a few days. Our body needs certain substances called nutrients, which are essential for its proper functioning and for maintaining a healthy nutritional status. The only source of obtaining these nutrients is food which we eat. Food comprises a variety of edible substances but we have to make a wise selection to get proper nourishment for our body. We have seen that food plays a very important part in our life. Various foods that we eat are utilised by our body through a number of processes like ingestion, digestion, absorption, transport and metabolism. A combination of all these processes by which the ingested food is utilised by our body is called nutrition and the state of nutrition of our body is called nutritional status. Food that we eat is made up of nutrients which include water, proteins, fats, carbohydrates, minerals and vitamins and they are required by the body in specific amounts depending up...