FOOD AND CULTURE

What is food?
• food: is a substance consisting essentially of protein, carbohydrate,
fat, and other nutrients used in the body of an organism to sustain
growth and vital processes and to furnish energy.
Types of food
• Carbohydrate
• Protein
• Fats
• Vitamins and minerals
• Water
Diagram picture of the food
What are the functions of the food?
• They provide us with the nutrients that keep us alive.
• They provide energy to the body, which helps one to grow and remain
healthy and active.
• Food provides the body with the requirements that help in building
new tissues and cells for growth.
• It provides immunity to the body, which helps it to fight against
diseases.
• Food exhibits significant social meanings, that is, it is the symbol of
social life.
What is food processing in nutrition?
• Food processing: is the process of transforming food items into a term
that can be used.it can cover the processing of raw materials into
food via different physical and chemical processes. Various activities
covered in this process are mincing, cooking, canning, liquefaction,
pickling, macerating and emulsification.it takes clean, harvested
crops, or butchered and slaughtered animal products to produce
attractive, marketable, and in several cases, life-long food products.
However, food processing can also lower the nutritional value of the
food and might include additives that might adversely affect health.
Diagram for food processing
Benefits of food processing
The important benefits of food processing include:
• Food processing reduces the number of harmful bacteria in food that
can cause diseases. For ex, drying, pickling dehydrates the food
product and alters the PH that prevents the growth of harmful micro-
organisms.
• It is also improves the shelf-life of food products.
• It reduces health in equalities and major health concerns.
Why is food important to society?
Food is an important part of cultural heritage and national identity. It
can connects us to people and places, bringing friends and families
together, and food habits, such ah whether you should eat all of the
food on your plate vary across the globe.
There are Five importance of food include:
1. Stay alive, be active , move and work.
2. Build new cells and tissues for growth.
3. Stay healthy and heal themselves.
4. Prevent and fight infections.
What is the cultural food?
• Cultural food: also called traditional dishes, represent the traditions,
beliefs, and practice of a geographic region, ethnic group, religious body,
or cross-cultural community. cultural foods may involve beliefs about
how certain foods are prepared or used. They may also symbolize a
group’s overall culture. These dishes and customs are passed down from
generation to generation. Cultural foods may represent a region, such as
pizza, pasta and tomato sauce from Italy or kimchi, seaweed, and dim
sum from Asia. Alternatively, they may represent a colonial pasta, such as
the fusion of west African and east Indian food traditions throughout the
Caribbean. Cultural foods may play a part in religious celebration and are
often at the core of our identities and familial connections.
Somali Ethnic food
figure:1
Figure:2
Somali traditional food
Figure:3

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC

What is food culture?
• Food culture can be defined as the attitude, beliefs and practices that
surround the production and consumption of food. Food culture
incorporates our ethnicity, and cultural heritage and provides a
mechanism of communication with others both externally and within
our families and communities.
Somali canjeero:
Why is food important to culture?
• As food represent our cultures, they come to become core parts of
our identities. Recipes are passed down through generations, the
testes , smells and sights of meals connects us with our ancestral
heritage. As human travel , Emigrate and live far from their homeland,
this sentiment becomes particularly pertinent.
• Also it can connects us to people and places, bringing friends and
families together, and food habits .
Advantage of cultural food
• Higher in vitamins and minerals .
• They are also lower in salt, fat and sugar.
• Higher in protein .
• Low in carbohydrate.
• Healthy food
Disadvantage of cultural food
• They used too much of a particular ingredient which can make a
person sick.
• Sometimes, the food will be allergic to the tourist people.
• It gets difficult to maintain the same test of the old dishes.
• It generally takes to much time to prepare traditional food.
• It also causes obesity.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TRADITIONAL
FOOD AND MODERN FOOD
• Traditional food: are foods that are passed through generations or
which have been consumed many generations.
• Traditional foods and dishes are traditional in nature , and may have a
historic precedent in national dish .
• Traditional food and beverages may be produced as a homemade, by
Restuarants and small manufactures, and by large food processing
plant facilities
• Advantage: Healthy ,can keep traditionally.
• Disadvantage: takes too much time
Modern food:
• Is the food that produced this modern era where the foods are
applied with advanced food science principles usually or sometimes
through continuous experimental food making.
Advantage
1. It saves time.
2. It is easy for cooking.
Disadvantage
3. Makes disease.
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY