Food is any material eaten to give nourishment to an organism for its proper growth and maintenance. In humans, food is generally of animal, plant or fungi source, and has vital nutrients, including proteins, vitamins, carbohydrates, fats, or minerals. Every living thing needs food to survive, but in case of human beings, food may be consumed in the form of foodstuffs, diet, snacks, etc., or it may be given as a substance as part of some other diet.
In today’s dietary context, it is not possible to eat as much food as was once the case, because of the enormous rise in the level of convenience. The situation has been aggravated by the rise in the level of obesity, a condition that invariably accompanies chronic shortage of food intake. To remedy this situation, the U.S.Diet recommends a generally healthy eating pattern, and imposes various limitations on the quantity of food that may be taken and the types of food to which an individual may add any of several substances to increase its palatability or flavor. Thus, food intake remains largely dependent on availability of various food stuffs, which are generally categorized into three categories: food for immediate consumption, food for storage period, and otherwise consumed food.
There are many people who believe that the rich man eat enough food to maintain his health, whereas the poor man eats nothing to maintain his health. But, the facts to the contrary are quite different. The truth is that the rich man buys foodstuff from the market on credit, while the poor man does not have this facility of buying food, since he does not have money. This difference of eating habits between the classes of individuals gives rise to many questions like, why some people eat more food than others, how many food items people of a given category of age eat in a day, etc., These and many other questions arise when an analysis is made of the food habits of a large section of the population of varying ages in a particular community.