Cook
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cook is itart and technique to prepare food for their consumption by human beings.
The kitchen can gather all the practical concepts around the selection and the purchase of the ingredients entering manufacture of meal, their preparation, ustensils used, modes of cooking, and various existing modes of presentation. It is often also associatedart of the table, with?nology and with gastronomy.
cook is also a specific part in one building, especially equipped for the preparation with food and the dishes. One generally lays out to with itwater current and of various apparatuses electric household appliances (furnace, hotplates, refrigerator...). In a housing of the type studio the kitchen is along a wall. Whereas the legislation prohibited it, Corbusier, in 1947 fact of migrating the kitchen and the bathroom to the c?ur of housing thanks to one controlled mechanical ventilation in its housing unit of . What was an exemption becomes the standard then.
Synopsis |
Preparation of food
Selection, production and the purchase of food
See the articles: Foodstuffs, food conservation, Religion and food
The type of kitchen depends on ingredients with provision of the cook, but also of the cultural and religious practices with respect to certain food (such as the fact of not eating pig, or to apply certain techniques of preparation of food so that they are kosher).
To become integral part of a mode of food, a food will have to be easily available (easy to collect or produce in sufficient quantity), of a quality adapted to the human needs, and possibly good market.
However, the man nourishes not only to ensure the development and the maintenance of sound organization, but also to be done pleasure. Consequently, a food must often have in more of gustatory qualities, which could be perceived differently according to companies'. To nourish itself is also a corporate measure: certain people seek to avoid eating certain food carrying an image devaluing (such as Swedish turnips or itoil colza after the First World War) and on the contrary, seek rarer and more expensive food (such as foie gras or it caviar), even dangerous (it fugu), and compete of imagination to prepare food in a way complex, appétente and visually satisfactory.
The kitchen is also the support and the demonstration of positions , even . Thus, certain cultural practices or certain religions posed taboos on certain food (the cow in the Indian, the pig among Moslems) or on certain culinary preparations (such as, in a dish, the separation of the meat of an animal, dairy products resulting from this animal in Jewish kitchen).
The refusal to consume food of animal origin (them végétaliens, or them vegetarians) often raises of a choice ethics, just as the wish of non-violence with respect to the animals, or that not to impose a too strong impact with biosphere (production of one kg animal proteins being more expensive from an energy point of view than the production of one kg plant proteins). These positions are often defended by ecologists (see too macrobiotics).
The food and the selected modes of preparation are also a function of the principles which the consumer wants to follow: in the industrialized countries, the request of the food consumers guaranteed from a point of view food safety (from where the development of labels), or of food produced according to principles' ofbiological agriculture, or in alicaments, was increasing during last decades (see too consumerism).
The initial choice of food thus depends on very many variables. A long time, the first factor was that of the availability of food
- in space: for example, meat consumption of mammoth in one located at the north of Europe or of corn in Fertile crescent
- in time: the food not being available in permanence, the periods of harvest gives place to harvest festivals in summer, or festivals of the grape harvest with the autumn; the end of the winter is also often synonymous with period of food shortage (food welding), and on these occasions all the food resources are mobilized.
The culinary practices and techniques were forged on the one hand around food collected by gathering or by fish, or produced by agriculture or breeding, but also around available (drink, coal).
Today, for the major part of humanity, the food used for the kitchen is before very resulting from gardening or of food crop. They are primarily of local origin. According to biodiversity areas, the food are more or less varied.
In the industrialized countries, the majority of food used in kitchen are bought in trade of proximity or of supermarkets. It acts sometimes of food directly resulting from the production, or of food already partially transformed, even ready to consume. In this last case, the kitchen is primarily reduced to heat food. The major part of this food at least is washed and treated for the best conservation (see food additive). A small part of the population produces its own food however, by the means of the gardening, or buys them directly to the producer, in firm or in gravers, along the roads. This food either is directly consumed, or preserved by setting out of bottle or congelation.
Because of the multiplication of planetary exchanges, the populations located in the zones economically favoured profit now from a very large variety of food, and this, constantly of the year. The fruit before available only to the autumn, could now be found all the year on the displays, thanks to its production in greenhouses heated in other countries more in the south, or thanks to sound air transport since the other hemisphere. This permanent availability of certain food upset the food practices as well as the many ones , such as the practice to offer an orange in France for Christmas, itorange being now a fruit not very expensive and available throughout the year (see too consumerism). So some are delighted by the appearance of a larger variety in the foodstuffs, and thus in the culinary preparations, others regret the disappearance of the practices relating to the rate/rhythm of the seasons, or preach itfood produces locally, less expensive on the environmental level.
Lastly, in the industrialized countries, it is observed a progressive abandonment of the consumption of certain food, victims of phenomena of mode, and "forgotten" ofagroalimentary industry local. Movements such as Food Slow fox trot aim at preserving the kitchen , as well as plants, seeds, them domestic animals and the agricultural techniques which are associated for him.
To eat for health and the pleasure
Food needs
See also: nutrition - digestion - health - diet - dietetics
To feed consists in satisfying the useful needs for an organization as regardswater, of proteins, of lipids, of glucids, of vitamins and oftrace elements, in order to ensure growth and the maintenance of the body, like providing the additional needs at the time of pregnancy, breast feeding or after one disease for example. The human beings have indeed nutritional needs different according to their sex, them age and their degree of activity.
The proteins, lipids and glucids will constitute at the same time a source ofenergy and a source of molecules necessary to the human body. The food provides these various elements, but in a way unbalanced compared to the needs.
For example, an adult man with the average activity will need 0,8 gram of proteins per day and kg; the consumption of meat he will make it possible to reach this amount rather easily; on the other hand, the exclusive consumption of salad will not allow it. However, the man also daily needs a certain contribution for fibres for its digestion and sound intestinal transit time, fibres which will be brought to him by salad and not by the meat.
babies and children need contributions in vitamin D, which should ideally be brought byfood, but will be often taken in the form of food complements because of its low availability in the daily ration. In Europe, the vitamin D until was recently often brought bycod-liver oil.
In the same way, them women needs 77% more raised have than them men in iron, and this as of puberty (because of the losses due to rules or with childbirth), like in calcium at the time of menopause (to avoid itosteoporosis, consequence of the modifications hormonal).
However the food will contain variable quantities of vitamin D, iron or calcium. It results from it that only a balanced food, associating food of the nutritional types different can ensure the contributions of the essential elements.
In a similar way, the hydrous ration varies according to the age and the activity, as well as the energy contribution (approximately 100-120 ml/100 kcal). A quarter of the extracellular water stock is renewed daily at infant against only one seventh atadult).
In the majority of the countries, the kitchen takes into account these nutritional needs in their diversity.
To cook consists in on the one hand preparing meals balanced in "mixing" in a dish of food of the types different (for example from the meat complete dishes, starchy foods and vegetables, or sandwiches such as side-bagnat) or by proposing several complementary dishes during one meal (dish of crudenesses, then flat containing starchy foods and meat, dairy produce then fruit).
To cook a food also supports its digestion, by the means of its cooking in particular.
The prepared food can provide variable contents of elements nutritional to hold account of the contributions necessary to a given individual. For example, the old man will often consume , what limits the problems of chewing often related to the great age, as well as low fuel consumption of water due to the progressive loss of the feeling of thirst at the old person.
modes nutritional specific can be proposed according to the needs: for example them modes hypocaloric, modes of the type Weight Watcher for the people having one ponderal overload, a kitchen reduced in lipidic contributions for the people to antecedent cardiac, or reduced out of fast glucids for diabetics, rich in proteins for the patients in laid down position, enriched in certain food complements for végétaliens.
Hygiene and food safety
See also: food safety, biosûreté, hygiene, disinfection
food safety cover two significances: it is at the same time the research of the quantitative and qualitative cover of the elementary requirements in food and water (for the countries for which reign shortage and malnutrition), or (for the countries developed in particular) medical safety products intended for the human consumption.
The conservation and the preparation of food require the respect of principles ofhygiene to be of good quality, even quite simply clean with consumption.
The consumer who buys his food, or which consumes them very prepared in a restaurant, must be able to ensure himself of this quality. However, at the end of the XXE century, in Europe in particular, of many food crises alarmed the consumers and incited the authorities to put in?uvre new inspecting devices of food safety. In France, itAFSSA (French Agency of medical safety of food) devoted separation between evaluation of the food risk and the management of this risk. On the international level, the United Nations for the food and agriculture (FAO), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the international Office of epizooties (GOOSE) have a strong role in the food security management. The policies practised by each country are strongly framed by different standards main roads, European and international.
Certain crises are related to defective standards for example of hygiene, or to give animal proteins to herbivores (the disease of the insane cow (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, ESB) which will be very vulnerable to a damaged product (prion) or veterinary controls too laxists. Lack of cold rooms in one slaughter-house or one butchery industrial can increase the risk of contamination by salmonellas. The microbiological analyses of food are often limited. The cereals, the fruits and the vegetables contain residues of pesticides. Cases of botulism or of contamination with dioxane were sometimes observed. A food crisis can cause a simple crisis of diarrhoea at an individual having delayed to consume a chicken, or to involve the hospitalization or the setting under antibiotics of all the visitors of a self-service store following a salmonellose, to even result in the death of certain people. quality control food, capacity to identify a contaminated food, with to trace the responsible agent in order to be able to isolate stocks from dangerous food is essential with the guarantie of food safety (robustness).
