Health food

Health food is a term for food purported to be beneficial to human health in ways that go beyond a normal healthy diet required for human nutrition. Foods marketed as health foods may be part of one or more categories, such as natural foods, organic foods, whole foods, vegetarian foods or dietary supplements. These products may be sold in health food stores or in the health food or organic sections of grocery stores.

Definition

While there's no precise definition for "health food", the United States Food and Drug Administration monitors and warns food manufacturers against labeling foods as having specific health effects when no evidence exists to support such statements.

Types of Health Foods

Health foods include both organic foods and natural foods. Organic food is food grown without synthetic pesticides or fertilizers, while natural food is food that has undergone minimal processing and contains no artificial additives.

Organic Foods

Organic foods are grown without the use of synthetic pesticides, bioengineered genes, petroleum-based fertilizers, and sewage sludge-based fertilizers. Organic livestock raised for meat, eggs, and dairy products must have access to the outdoors and be given organic feed.

Natural Foods

Natural foods and "all natural foods" are widely used terms in food labeling and marketing with a variety of definitions, most of which are vague. The term is often assumed to imply foods that are not processed and whose ingredients are all natural products (in the chemist's sense of that term), thus conveying an appeal to nature.

Health Food Stores

A health food store is a type of grocery store that primarily sells health foods, organic foods, local produce, and often nutritional supplements. Health food stores typically offer a wider or more specialized selection of foods than conventional grocery stores for their customers, for example athletes and bodybuilders, people with special dietary needs, such as people who are allergic to the gluten in wheat or some other substance, and people who observe vegetarian, vegan, raw food, organic, or other alternative diets.

See Also

• Dietary supplement
• Organic food
• Natural food
• Health food store

Health food Resources
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