Nutritive, nutraceutical, medicinal and energetic value of fruits and vegetables

Abstract

The nutrient content is not as important as the ratio between the compounds, their quality, their availability and their digestive use. Last but not least, the psychical satisfaction and the pleasure of consumption are also important. The main goal of fruits and vegetables consumption is to assure certain nutritive and catalytic needs, whereas other foodstuff groups assure the energetic needs. The dietetic value is a natural prophylactic (preventive) or curative quality of certain foodstuffs. It may also be acquired for the dietetic foodstuffs, by applying some technologies and the rigorous abidance of the hygienic-sanitary norms, namely some recipes approved by the specialists. The nutraceutical value. Many vegetal products have entered and are still entering the human alimentation (for instance, nettle, dandelion, etc), as supplements with an auxiliary role in alimentation (vitaminizing, depurative* and sometimes, therapeutic one). Initially, their texture or taste were not very pleasant and were not consumed very frequently. Their auxiliary role prevailed over the proper alimentary role, being eaten in order to have a healthy body. The medicinal value is subordinated to the nutraceutical value and certain foodstuff might have medicinal qualities, one of the possible functions of food being also the therapeutic one. There is also an important ethno-botanical tradition of the folk medicine from all the countries that have kept from old times the knowledge about the healing features of fruits and vegetables, picked up from nature or cultivated.