Study Material

In our country, an individual eats food 3 - 4 times a day. The food consumed at a particular time of the day constitute a meal. For example, food taken in the morning constitute a meal called the breakfast. 

Similarly, foods eaten in the afternoon are a part of lunch, and those eaten in the evening or night is the dinner.

Ingredients in Food ltems : Food items may be eaten raw or cooked. Raw food items include fruits like banana or apple. Just a single material or ingredient forms the food item in the above example. Think of cooked food items like rice, dal, roti or chapati and vegetable curry.

These food items may consist of two or more ingredients as given.

Food is required by the body for the following purposes.

   (i) For energy requirement to perform various functions of body to sustain life.

   (ii) For growth : You have seen yourself growing. Without proper food, your growth would not be possible.

   (iii) For repair of damaged or injured body parts ; when you get hurt, your skin is damaged and the blood is lost. Repair of such damaged parts takes place by the addition of new cells.

   (iv) For protection from diseases and infection.

 

FOODS EATEN BY LIVING ORGANISMS
 

   All living things need food. Most plants can manufacture their own food. Animals, however, require ready-made food and thus they eat either plants or other animals. Different animals eat different kinds of food.

You must have seen earthworms burrowing in the soil. They swallow soil. Mosquitoes suck the blood of other animals. Mosquito causing malaria sucks the blood of man. Birds feed on small insects, worms and fruits. On the basis of their food habit, animals are of three types :

(i) Herbivores : Animals which eat plants and plant products — these are called herbivores. e.g. 

Cow, sheep, deer elephant etc.

(ii) Carnivores : Animals which eat flesh of other animals are called carnivores. e.g. Lion, Tiger, 

Fox, Wolf etc.

(iii) Ommivores : Animals eating both plants and animals are called omnivores e.g. Humans, crow, 

squirrels and cockroaches.

 

SOURCES OF FOOD
 

 

Both plants and animals provide us food (and a number of other useful products such as medicines, paper, timber and fibres.

 

Plants as Source of Food : Foods obtained from plants are of different types — cereals, pulses, vegetables, fruits, oils, sugar, tea, coffee and spices.

 

Plant Parts and Animal Products as Food
 

Plants are one source of our food. Which parts of a plant?

We eat many leafy vegetables. We eat fruits of some plants. Sometimes roots, sometimes stems and even flowers. Have you ever eaten pumpkin flowers dipped in rice paste and fried?

Try it!

Some plants have two or more edible (eatable) parts. Seeds of mustard plants give us oil and the leaves are used as a vegetable. Can you think of the different parts of a banana plant that are used as food ? Think of more examples where two or more parts
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