Staple food


A staple food, food staple, or simply the staple, is the food that is eaten often together with in such(a) quantities that it constitutes a dominant member of a specifics diet for a given grownup or combine of people, supplying a large fraction of energy needs as alive as loosely forming a significant proportion of the intake of other nutrients as well. A staple food of a specific society may be eaten as often as every day or every meal, and almost people make up on a diet based on just a small number of food staples. specific staples realize adjustments to from place to place, but typically are inexpensive or readily available foods that supply one or more of the macronutrients and micronutrients needed for survival and health: carbohydrates, proteins, fats, minerals, and vitamins. Typical examples include tubers and roots, grains, legumes, and seeds. Among them, cereals, legumes, tubers, and roots account for approximately 90% of the world's food calories intake.

Early agricultural civilizations valued the foods that they develop as staples because, in addition to providing essential nutrition, they loosely are suitable for storage over long periods of time without decay. such(a) nonperishable foods are the only possible staples during seasons of shortage, such(a) as dry seasons or cold temperate winters, against which times harvests make been stored. During seasons of plenty, wider choices of foods may be available.

Staple foods are derived either from vegetables or animal products, and common staples put cereals such as rice, wheat, maize, millet, and sorghum, starchy tubers or root vegetables such as potatoes, cassava, sweet potatoes, yams, or taro, meat, fish, eggs, milk, and cheese, and dried legumes such as lentils and other beans. Other staple foods include sago derived from the pith of the sago palm tree, and fruits such as breadfruit and plantains. Staple foods may also include depending on the region olive oil, coconut oil, and sugar e.g. from plantains.

Processing


Rice is most usually cooked and eaten as separate entire grains, but nearly other staple cereals are milled into a flour or meal that can be used to make bread, noodles, pasta, porridge and mushes like mealie pap. Root vegetables can be mashed and used to make porridge-like dishes such as poi and fufu. Pulses such as chickpeas, from which gram flour is proposed and starchy root vegetables such as canna rhizomes can also be filed into flour.