Unit - - Introduction to food supply of a sufficient amount of food, its preservation and storage, resulted in the emergence of cities and urban civilization. Today in our diet, traditional foods are being replaced by fast foods. Traditional foods are nutrient rich, does not contain any artificial colouring, flavours or preservatives. Whereas fast foods contain all these things.
In addition, food insecurity and nutrition insecurity are challenging public health in the present trend. Definition The term ‘food’ refers to what we eat and which nourishes the body. It includes solids, semi-solids and liquids. so, two important features for any item to be called food are: It should be worth eating, that is, it should be ‘edible’.
It must nourish the body. . Functions of food Food is important for life. To be healthy and active, we should certainly have enough food.
The food we eat should be safe and rich in all the nutrients for our body needs. We should choose from a wide variety of foods and we should eat them regularly, every day. Do not forget that we should also enjoy the food that we eat; it should look, smell and taste good. Without good nutrition, children and young people cannot develop their potential to the full and adults will have difficulty in doing their best.
Food provides our body with what they need to . Evolution of Food: Some of our knowledge of what early man ate comes from archaeological studies of cave drawings of food gathering and preparation activities. primitive men collected their food from wild animals and plants. They depended upon fruits, nuts, roots and other plant foods, meat from animals and fish from seas, lakes and rivers.
They were forced to spend their days and nights in search of food. They roamed from place to place to correspond the changing season, the appearance and disappearance of various fruits and leaves, or the migration and movement of game animals. They lived as hunters and gatherers. In this way they lived till 10000 years ago in a few places