The term health food is generally is used to describe foods that are considered to be beneficial to health, beyond a normal healthy diet required for human nutrition. However, the term is not precisely defined by national regulatory agencies such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
"Health food" is sometimes used as an umbrella term encompassing natural foods, organic foods, whole foods, and sometimes dietary supplements. Such products are sold in health food stores or in the health/organic sections of supermarkets. "Health food" may also refer to functional food: foods for which a specific claim of health benefits is made, such as that consumption of the food may prevent disease. Additionally, "health food" is sometimes used in contrast with "junk food", which may be high in calories but has little other nutritional value.
Jack LaLanne and Robert Bootzin known as "Gypsy Boots" were early promoters of health foods in the past century in America.
Read more about Health Food: Health Claims in Food Labeling and Marketing
Famous quotes containing the words health food, health and/or food:
“Health foods make promises that only the Second Coming could fulfill.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Criticism is often not a science; it is a craft, requiring more good health than wit, more hard work than talent, more habit than native genius. In the hands of a man who has read widely but lacks judgment, applied to certain subjects it can corrupt both its readers and the writer himself.”
—Jean De La Bruyère (1645–1696)
“There is such a thing as food and such a thing as poison. But the damage done by those who pass off poison as food is far less than that done by those who generation after generation convince people that food is poison.”
—Paul Goodman (1911–1972)