Properties of Food
CHEMICAL PROPERTIES
The chemical values of food represent the "science of nutrition", and these
vital nutrients are water, protein, carbohydrates, fats, minerals, vitamins,
enzymes, co-enzymes, fiber and trace elements. Roughly, the human body is
composed of 60% water, 20% protein, 15% fat and 5% carbohydrates, vitamins,
potassium, sodium, and calcium. It is certainly important to observe chemical
intake of foods and make sure it is properly balanced within the body to maintain
normal chemical homeostasis, or balance.
These chemical values are keys to drive all functions within the body.
Nutrition is very important to meet the daily chemical needs of the body for
survival, however, nutrition is merely a subcategory of food. Food is not nutrition
and nutrition is not food. Therefore, when one looks at the "nutritional facts" label
on the foods being bought, this does not represent the entire classification of
food, but only the chemical ingredients needed (or not needed) by the body.
PHYSICAL PROPERTIES
The physical values of food are taste, color, internal temperature, motion,
energy, impulse, momentum, elasticity, fluid mechanics, waves, vibrating bodies,
thermodynamics, acoustic phenomena, optics, electrostatics, electric currents,
electrodynamics, high energy physics, and relationship with internal organs and
organ systems.
When the physics of foods is carefully studied, it is clear that there are many
important aspects of food that have been completely disregarded, such as taste,
color of food, effects to the different internal organ systems, the internal
temperature and the seasonal meaning of the individual foods.
BIOLOGICAL PROPERTIES
The biological values of food are development, shape, size, how it grew, when
it grew, age, life span, nature, category (kingdom, phylum, class, order, family,
genus, and species), fresh or preserved, and environmental characteristics
(sunny, shady, mountain, desert, lake, sea, ocean, dry, or wet that attributed to
the growth and development or withering and death).
Biology is very important when describing the individual foods, because it
represents the nature of the growth and development of the food being
consumed.
Human beings have to depend on Nature for sustenance and survival. The
traditional system of medicine in India dates back to the age of the Rigveda