In Chapter 1, we made lists of the food items that we eat. We also identified food items eaten in different parts of India and marked these on its map.

A meal could consist of chapati, dal and brinjal curry. Another may be rice, sambar and a vegetable preparation of lady’s finger (bhindi). Yet another meal could be appam, fish curry and vegetables.

Activity 1

Sometimes, we may not really have all this variety in our meals. If we are travelling, we may eat whatever is available on the way. It may not be possible for some of us, to eat such a variety of items, most of the time.

There must be some reason though, why meals usually consist of such a distribution. Do you think that our body needs different kinds of food for some special purpose?

2.1 What Do Different Food Items Contain?

We know that each dish is usually made up of one or more ingredients, which we get from plants or animals. These ingredients contain some components that are needed by our body. These components are called nutrients. The major nutrients in our food are named carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins and minerals. In addition, food contains dietary fibres and water which are also needed by our body.

Do all foods contain all these nutrients? With some simple methods we can test whether cooked food or a raw ingredient contains one or more of these nutrients. The tests for presence of carbohydrates, proteins and fats are simpler to do as compared to the tests for other nutrients. Let us do these tests and record all our observations in Table 2.2.

For carrying out these tests, you will need solutions of iodine, copper sulphate and caustic soda. You will also need a few test tubes and a dropper.

Try these tests on cooked food items as well as raw materials. Table 2.2 shows you a way to record the observations from these tests. Some food items are given in this table. You can conduct the tests either with these or any other available food items. Do these tests carefully and do not try to eat or taste any chemicals.

If the required solutions are not available in readymade form, your teacher can prepare them as given in the box.

Let us begin by testing different food items to see if they contain carbohydrates. There are many types of carbohydrates. The main carbohydrates found in our food are in the form of starch and sugars. We can easily test if a food item contains starch.

Activity 2

Test for Protein

Take a small quantity of a food item for testing. If the food you want to test is a solid, you first need to make a paste of it or powder it. Grind or mash a small quantity of the food item. Put some of this in a clean test tube, add 10 drops of water to it and shake the test tube.

Now, using a dropper, add two drops of solution of copper sulphate and ten drops of solution of caustic soda to the test tube (Fig. 2.2). Shake well and let the test tube stand for a few minutes. What do you see? Did the contents of the test tube turn violet? A violet colour indicates presence of proteins in the food item.

Now, you can repeat this test on other food items.

Table 2.2 Nutrients present in some food items

Test for Fats

Take a small quantity of a food item. Wrap it in a piece of paper and crush it. Take care that the paper does not tear. Now, straighten the paper and observe it carefully. Does it have an oily patch? Hold the paper against light. Are you able to see the light faintly, through this patch?

An oily patch on paper shows that the food item contains fat. The food items may sometimes contain a little water. Therefore, after you have rubbed an item on paper, let the paper dry for a while. If there were any water that may have come from food, it would dry up after some time. If no oily patch shows up after this, the food item does not contain any fat.

What do these tests show? Are fats, proteins and starch present in all the food items that you tested? Does a food item contain more than one nutrient? Do you find any food item that does not contain any of these nutrients?

We tested food items for three nutrients — carbohydrates, proteins and fats. There are also other nutrients like vitamins and minerals that are present in different food items. Why do we need all these nutrients?

2.2 What do Various Nutrients do for our Body?

Carbohydrates mainly provide energy to our body. Fats also give us energy. In fact, fats give much more energy as compared to the same amount of carbohydrates. Foods containing fats and carbohydrates are also called ‘energy giving foods’ (Fig. 2.3 and Fig. 2.4).

Fig. 2.5 Some sources of proteins: (a) plant sources and (b) animal sources

Vitamins help in protecting our body against diseases. Vitamins also help in keeping our eyes, bones, teeth and gums healthy.

Vitamins are of different kinds known by different names. Some of these are Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin D, Vitamin E and K. There is also a group of vitamins called Vitamin B-complex. Our body needs all types of vitamins in small quantities. Vitamin A keeps our skin and eyes healthy. Vitamin C helps body to fight against many diseases. Vitamin D helps our body to use calcium for bones and teeth. Foods that are rich in different vitamins are shown in Fig. 2.6 to Fig. 2.9.

Minerals are needed by our body in small amounts. Each one is essential for proper growth of body and to maintain good health. Some sources of different minerals are shown in Fig. 2.10.

Water helps our body to absorb nutrients from food. It also helps in throwing out some wastes from body as urine and sweat. Normally, we get most of the water that our body needs from the liquids we drink — such as water, milk and tea. In addition, we add water to most cooked foods. Let’s see if there is any other source which provides water to our body.

Activity 3

We see that many food materials themselves contain water. To some extent, our body needs are met by this water. Apart from this, we also add water while cooking many food items.

2.3 Balanced Diet

The food we normally eat in a day is our diet. For growth and maintenance of good health, our diet should have all the nutrients that our body needs, in right quantities. Not too much of one and not too little of the other. The diet should also contain a good amount of roughage and water. Such a diet is called a balanced diet.

Do you think that people of all ages need the same type of diet? Do you also think that, what we need for a balanced diet would depend on the amount of physical work that we do?

Prepare a chart of whatever you eat over a period of a week. Check whether all the nutrients mentioned are present in one or the other food items being eaten within a day or so.

Pulses, groundnut, soyabean, sprouted seeds (moong and Bengal gram), fermented foods (South Indian foods such as idlis), a combination of flours (missi roti, thepla made from cereals and pulses), banana, spinach, sattu, jaggery, available vegetables and other such foods provide many nutrients. Therefore, one can eat a balanced diet without expensive food materials.

If the vegetables and fruits are washed after cutting or peeling them, it may result in the loss of some vitamins. The skins of many vegetables and fruits contain vitamins and minerals. Similarly, repeated washing of rice and pulses may remove some vitamins and minerals present in them.

We all know that cooking improves the taste of food and makes it easier to digest. At the same time, cooking also results in the loss of certain nutrients. Many useful proteins and considerable amounts of minerals are lost if excess water is used during cooking and is then thrown away.

Vitamin C gets easily destroyed by heat during cooking. Would it not be sensible to include some fruits and raw vegetables in our diet?

Boojho thought that fats would be the best foods to eat, all the time. A katori (bowl) of fat will give much more energy than a katori of carbohydrate rich food, isn’t it? So, he ate nothing but food rich in fats — fried food like samosa and poori (snacks), malai, rabdi and peda (sweets).

Do you think he was right? No, of course not! It can be very harmful for us to eat too much of fat rich foods and we may end up suffering from a condition called obesity.

2.4 Deficiency Diseases

A person may be getting enough food to eat, but sometimes the food may not contain a particular nutrient. If this continues over a long period of time, the person may suffer from its deficiency. Deficiency of one or more nutrients can cause diseases or disorders in our body. Diseases that occur due to lack of nutrients over a long period are called deficiency diseases.

If a person does not get enough proteins in his/her food for a long time, he/she is likely to have stunted growth, swelling of face, discolouration of hair, skin diseases and diarrhoea.

If the diet is deficient in both carbohydrates and proteins for a long period of time, the growth may stop completely. Such a person becomes very lean and thin and so weak that he/she may not even be able to move.

Deficiency of different vitamins and minerals may also result in certain diseases or disorders. Some of these are mentioned in Table 2.3.

All deficiency diseases can be prevented by taking a balanced diet.

In this chapter, we asked ourselves the reason why widely varying food from different regions had a common distribution. This distribution, we find, ensures that our meals have a balance of the different nutrients needed by the body.

EXERCISE

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