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Edible plants have long been a source of nutrition for humans, and the reliable provision of food through agriculture and horticulture is the basis of civilization since the Neolithic Revolution. Medicinal herbs were and still remain to be the key ingredients of many traditional medicine practices, as well as being raw materials for some modern ...
Human nutrition deals with the provision of essential nutrients in food that are necessary to support human life and good health. [1] Poor nutrition is a chronic problem often linked to poverty, food security , or a poor understanding of nutritional requirements. [ 2 ]
Most human plant-based food calories come from maize, rice, and wheat. [13] Plants can be processed into bread, pasta, cereals, juices and jams, or raw ingredients such as sugar, herbs, spices and oils can be extracted. [14] Oilseeds are often pressed to produce rich oils: sunflower, flaxseed, rapeseed (including canola oil) and sesame. [15]
A generalist species is able to thrive in a wide variety of environmental conditions and can make use of a variety of different resources (for example, a heterotroph with a varied diet). A specialist species can thrive only in a narrow range of environmental conditions or has a limited diet.
For example, some algae live photoautotrophically in the light, but shift to chemoorganoheterotrophy in the dark. Even higher plants retained their ability to respire heterotrophically on starch at night which had been synthesised phototrophically during the day. Prokaryotes show a great diversity of nutritional categories. [16]
Human cultivation of plants is the core of agriculture, which in turn has played a key role in the history of world civilizations. [100] Humans depend on flowering plants for food, either directly or as feed in animal husbandry.
Food from plants. A plant-based diet is a diet consisting mostly or entirely of plant-based foods. [1] [2] It encompasses a wide range of dietary patterns that contain low amounts of animal products and high amounts of fiber-rich [3] plant products such as vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, herbs, and spices.
For example, spatial heterogeneity is maintained, which means there will always be pockets of plants not found by herbivores. This stabilizing dynamic plays an especially important role for specialist herbivores that feed on one species of plant and prevents these specialists from wiping out their food source. [ 68 ]