Food
Food is a substance that can be consumed, including liquid drinks. Food is the main source of energy and of nutrition for animals and human body, and it is usually of animal or plant origin. The study of food is known as Food Science. In English, the term food is very often used as metaphorically or figuratively, in food for thought.
Food Aid:
Food Aid could benefit people who are suffering from a shortage of food. Conversely, badly managed food aid can lead problems by disrupting local markets, depressing crop prices or even discouraging food production. Its provision, or endangered withdrawal, is sometimes also used as a political tool to influence the politics of the destination country. International efforts to allocate good food to the neediest countries are co-ordinated by the World Food Programme.
Food Sufficiency:
Food Deprivation leads to malnutrition and eventually starvation. This is often related with the famine that involves the absence of food in the entire communities. This may have a devastating and widespread effect on human health and the mortality. In 2003 it was also estimated that every year, 40 million people die of hunger on globe. Rationing is sometimes used to distribute food when there is a shortage, most remarkably during times of any war.
Food Deprivation is regarded as an arrears need in Maslow's hierarchy of needs and also measured using famine scales.
Food is usually obtained through farming, ranching, and fishing, with hunting, foraging or few other methods of subsistence locally important for some populations, but minor for others.
In the modern era in developed nations like India, food supply is increasingly dependent upon agriculture, aquaculture, industrial farming and fish farming techniques. These techniques aim to maximize the amount of food produced and concentrate on minimizing the cost. The techniques carry a reliance on mechanized tools, from the threshing machine and seed drill, to the tractor and combine. Developed tools have all been combined with the use of pesticides just to promote high crop yields and to combat insects or mammals that really reduce yield.
More recently, there has been a continually growing trend towards more Sustainable agricultural practices. This approach - which is partially fuelled by consumer demand - encourages biodiversity, local independence and with Organic farming methods.
Major influence on food production is international policy, e.g. can be the World Trade Organization and Common Agricultural Policy, national government policy or law and war.
Food for livestock is fodder and by tradition comprises hay or grain.
Food Allergies:
Some people have food allergies or some sensitivity to foods which are otherwise healthy to the majority of people.
The amount of the food substance required to aggravate its reaction in a susceptible individual could be minute. For instance, tiny amounts of food in air, too minute to be smelled, have been known to aggravate fatal reactions in adequately sensitive individuals. In theory, any food might provoke a reaction; however, this usually involves gluten, corn, shellfish (mollusks), peanuts, and soy.
Most patients present with diarrhea after consuming certain foodstuffs, skin symptoms (rashes), bloating, vomiting and other regurgitation. The digestive complaints usually develop within half an hour of consuming the allergen.
Rarely, food allergy could also lead to anaphylactic shock: hypotension (low blood pressure) and loss of consciousness. This is actually a medical emergency. An allergen related with this type of reaction is a peanut, although latex products could be induced similar reactions. Initial treatment is with epinephrine (adrenaline), frequently carried by known patients in the form of an Epi-pen.
Food allergy is thought to enlarge easier in patients with the atopic syndrome; it is a very common combination of diseases: allergic rhinitis and conjunctivitis, eczema and asthma. The syndrome has a very strong inherited component; a family history of these diseases could be indicative of the atopic syndrome.
Dietary Habits:
Dietary Habits play a vital role in the health and mortality of all humans. For example:
Eating disorders are a group of mental disorders,
which interfere with normal food consumption. They normally affect people with a negative body image.
13% of the world's population is suffering from Iodine deficiency.
In 2003 it was estimated that vitamin A deficiency
usually causes blindness in up to 500,000 children each year.
Vitamin C deficiency results in the scurvy.
Calcium, Vitamin D and Phosphorus are unified.
The consumption of each might affect the absorption of the others.
Kwashiorkor and marasmus are childhood
disorders lead by lack of nutritional protein.
Obesity, a severe problem in the western
world, leads to higher chances of rising heart disease, diabetes, and few other diseases.
Concerns about food borne illness have long been influencing diet. Traditionally humans have learned to avoid foods, which induce acute illness. Some believe that this is the underlying basis behind some traditional religious nutritional requirements. Additionally, many people choose to forgo food from animal foundation to varying degrees; see vegetarianism, veganism, fruitarianism, living foods diet, and also raw foodism.
The nutrient content of diets in the industrialized countries contain more animal fat, sugar, energy, alcohol and very less dietary fiber, carbohydrates and antioxidants. Contemporary changes to the work, family and the exercise patterns, together with concerns about the effect of nutrition and overeating on a human health and mortality are all having an effect on usual eating habits. Physicians and alternative medicine practitioners might even recommend changes to diet as part of their recommendations for treatment.
More recently, dietary habits have been really influenced by the concerns, which some people have about the chronic impact on health that arise through the eating of genetically modified food. Further considering about the impact of industrial farming on the animal welfare, human health and the environment are sometime having an effect on contemporary human dietary habits. This in fact has led to the emergence of a counter-culture with a preference for organic and local food.
