Chapter 2 Food and Food Requirements by Dr. Tang在线视频

Chapter 2 Food and Four Basic Requirements

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen. Welcome to this lecture again! In this lecture, we'll talk about the second topic, food and food basic requirements. First of all, what is the food? we eat food every day, but what is the definition for food？Food, firstly, is a substance, not a dream, not thinking, it's a real substance, it is a thing we can see or we can touch. And secondly, food should be edible. Please pay attention to this word edible. It's an active word, it's not passive. Active means we would love to eat, all the food, all these substances are attractive to us to eat. Why is it attractive？Why would we like to eat？Because it's good for us, that's a second point for food. How is the food to our body? It’s by mouth, not by injection. So all the food are taken by our mouth. For example, we have bread, we have cigarettes, we have sugars, beverage or wine, and all these stuffs are food. So what is the definition for food? Very simple, a food is any edible substance taken by mouth; this is a definition for food, or food product.

As a food, what would be their requirements or the basic requirements? First of all, food must be safe. It means there is no harmful to our health, that's a first one.

Secondly, all the food, must be quality, or follow the quality standard. What is the quality standard? That means this food should have or present intrinsic attributes that is the attributes or the features this food should have. These include two things, the first thing, nutrition, so the food must have some kind of nutrients, which is beneficial to our health. And also the food must be attractive to our consumers that mean when we eat this food, we feel happy, we feel very enjoyable. Those two things and actually are the intrinsic attributes or the features of the food. So this is a quality issue.

Thirdly, as a food, food must be acceptable by consumers or by the general consumers. How can the consumer accept the food that means they are affordable to buy this food? It means food is a business. What's a business? If the food is produced only for you, it's not a business. If you produce a food to make money, that's food business. In order to sell out those food and get money back, your food must be reasonable priced for consumers. These are four basic requirements for food. Based on these four basic requirements in order, that is safe, quality and enjoyable and price acceptable. And now I have a question here. Should food be safe?

So food should be safe, based on this, the food should be safe. So this Slide shows us a relationship between the food, our health and business, the food must be taken by our mouth, and go through our digestion system, and during digestion we take the nutrients for our health, and for our body. However, if the substance inside the food we taken, it's not a nutrient, or it is a hazard, it also affects our health. So that is a relationship between food and health. To see if it is a beneficial effect to our health or the negative effect to our health.

Food is also a business. So make our food a big food industry. This slice indicates that why the food should be processed? Normally our food should process first and then we can eat. Most of the food has to be processed, why? Based on these four basic requirements, the first thing to process food is for safety. During process we have to use equipment, we have to use production line, and we have to use machine, why should we buy these? The first purposes are to remove the hazards from that food, or remove hazards contained it. This is the first one.

And the second one why the food should be processed is because the food has to be attractive to consumers. Therefore we process food to meet the requirements for consumers. For example the nutritional, we try our best to retain as much as nutrients inside the food by processing. Actually during process those nutrients would be lost, so our purpose is to try our best to remain as much as possible therefore it is more benefit or much more benefit to our health.

The third one why should we process food is that we want food good looking, and good taste, and more attractive. Therefore we also use methods for example flying, baking to make various foods for example the bread with very good color and very good flavor. That's the third purpose for us to process food.

And also as I said, food is really a business, and is an industry, and nowadays in the developed countries or even in our China, food industry is the number one industry, and even more than or much more than computer or automobiles, why? Food is consumed by everyone, every meal, and every day. It is a big amount to consumer, that's why it's a big industry. We want to produce food for the consumers, and at least, no harm to our consumer. Of course we want to sell out those products to earn some money or to get profit. We want our consumers be willing to spend their money on our food. Therefore we have to make that food affordable to the consumers. The price cannot be as high as you want, so that is also another reasons our food, our food job is not so high salary, compared to other areas. However our food business or food job is very stable, because no matter today or tomorrow, no matter this country or other countries we always need the food industry， therefore the food business jobs are always available on every year，every day and everywhere, so that is why the food is processed.

In this lecture we mainly talked about what is food, the definition of food. Remember food is an edible substance taken by mouth. This definition of course is very clearly different from medicine. Medicine is not enjoyable, also not all the medicine taken by mouth. And some of medicine is taken by injection. So this is the definition for food. And also as a food, we must have, particularly the processed food, must have four basic requirements in order. That is safe or safety, and secondly nutritional, or some kind of nutrients, and thirdly enjoyable, that means attractive, and the fourth one is the price, reasonable price. Those are the four main basic requirements. Based on these, I have four questions for your discussion.

First of all, could you give an example to show what food is? And also based on this definition, my question is that is tobacco a food, or smoking a food?

The second question is what are the basic requirements for foods or processed foods? And why they're in the order of safety, quality and reasonable price? Not the other order?

The third question is, should food product be safe?

The final question, are there any safety issue, or are there any safety problems in the processed foods or in the food industry? If yes, why? If no, why? So please consider these for discussing for this lecture. Thank you, see you next time.