Whois & Analysis for healthbenefitstimes.com

A spice is a seed, fruit, root, bark, or other plant substance primarily used for flavoring, coloring or preserving food.

Spices are distinguished from herbs, which are the leaves, flowers, or stems from plants used for flavoring or as a garnish.

Sometimes, spices may be ground into a powder for convenience.

Many spices have antimicrobial properties.

This may explain why spices are more commonly used in warmer climates, which have more infectious diseases, and why the use of spices is prominent in meat, which is particularly susceptible to spoiling.

Spices are sometimes used in medicine, religious rituals, cosmetics or perfume production, or as a vegetable.

An essential oil is a concentrated hydrophobic liquid containing volatile aroma compounds from plants.

Essential oils are also known as volatile oils, ethereal oils, aetherolea, or simply as the oil of the plant from which they were extracted, such as oil of clove.

An oil is "essential" in the sense that it contains the "essence of" the plant's fragrance—the characteristic fragrance of the plant from which it is derived.

The term essential used here does not mean indispensable as with the terms essential amino acid or essential fatty acid which are so called since they are nutritionally required by a given living organism.

In general use, herbs are any plants used for food, flavoring, medicine, or fragrances for their savory or aromatic properties.

Culinary use typically distinguishes herbs from spices.

Herbs refers to the leafy green or flowering parts of a plant (either fresh or dried), while spices are produced from other parts of the plant (usually dried), including seeds, berries, bark, roots and fruits.

In everyday usage, a vegetable is any part of a plant that is consumed by humans as food as part of a meal.

The term vegetable is somewhat arbitrary, and largely defined through culinary and cultural tradition.

It normally excludes other food derived from plants such as fruits, nuts, and cereal grains, but includes seeds such as pulses.

The original meaning of the word vegetable, still used in biology, was to describe all types of plant, as in the terms "vegetable kingdom" and "vegetable matter".

A cereal is any grass cultivated for the edible components of its grain (botanically, a type of fruit called a caryopsis), composed of the endosperm, germ, and bran.

Cereal grains are grown in greater quantities and provide more food energy worldwide than any other type of crop and are therefore staple crops.

Edible grains from other plant families, such as buckwheat (Polygonaceae), quinoa (Amaranthaceae) and chia (Lamiaceae), are referred to as pseudocereals.