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.
