What is your favourite food?
Do you know the ingredients that it has?

Food contains different ingredients that have special components called nutrients. Nutrients include carbohydrates, proteins, fat, vitamins, and minerals. The body also needs dietary fibres and water.
One type of food might not have all the nutrients. However, nutrients in each food may be present in different amounts. Some ingredients are rich in carbohydrates, some in proteins, and others are rich in fats.

Let’s try to do these 3 experiments to identify starch, fat, and protein in our food.

To identify starch, take a small piece of food like a potato and put 2-3 drops of diluted iodine on this piece. If it has starch, the color will change to bluish-black.

To identify fat, grab a tracing paper and wrap it around a piece of food like chocolate. Without letting the paper tear apart, crush the piece and remove the paper. If you see a patch of oil, that is the fat in chocolate.

To identify protein content in a type of food like cheese,
Turn it into a paste or powder form.
Put it in a test tube or small glass beaker.
Add 2 drops of copper sulfate and 10 drops of caustic soda.
Shake the tube well and let it rest for a few minutes. If the colour turns violet, it means there is protein.

So what are the benefits of all these nutrients?
There are many types of vitamins like Vitamin A, C, D, E, K, and a group of vitamins that are called B complex.

Here are some of their benefits.
Vitamin A keeps the eyes and skin healthy.
Vitamin B helps in making the blood in the body.
Vitamin C fights many diseases.
Vitamin D helps in using calcium for our bones and teeth.
Vitamin E also helps to fight off diseases.
Vitamin K keeps the body safe during injuries.
In addition, our body needs dietary fibres which are also known as roughage. They remove any undigested food from the body. Roughage is provided by plants. We get it in whole grains, potatoes, fruits, and vegetables.

Water is also an essential part of our body. It helps to absorb the food and throw out waste from the body through urine and sweat. We get it through drinking plain water, juices, tea, coffee, and from cooked foods.

Think of your favourite food and identify the nutrients it contains. Which nutrient is the most available?
We need a balanced diet that contains proper amounts of these nutrients along with dietary fibre and water. Each person needs a different ratio of nutrients. Imbalanced amounts of nutrients would cause various deficiency diseases. So, make sure you eat a healthy and balanced meal.

By the way, you have just finished online revisions of the chapter- Components of Food from your Class 6 NCERT Science textbook. Did you find it interesting? At SeekoG, there are lots of concepts that you can revise in just a few minutes. The SeekoG online mind maps also help you to remember them easily.