Staple food

Grains

Various types of potatoes

A staple food, sometimes simply referred to as a staple, is a food that is eaten routinely, and in such quantities that it constitutes a dominant portion of a standard diet in a given people, supplying a large fraction of the needs for energy-rich materials and generally a significant proportion of the intake of other nutrients as well. The staple food of a specific society may be eaten as often as every day, or every meal, and most people live on a diet based on just a small number of staples.^[1]

Staple foods vary from place to place, but typically they are inexpensive or readily available foods that supply one or more of the three organic macronutrients needed for survival and health: carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. Typical examples of staples include tuber- or root-crops, grains, legumes, and other seeds. Early agricultural civilizations valued the foods that they established as staples because, in addition to providing necessary nutrition, they generally are suitable for storage over long periods of time without decay. Such storable foods are the only possible staples during seasons of shortage, such as dry seasons or cold-temperate winters, against which times harvests have been stored; during seasons of plenty wider choices of foods may be available.

Most staple plant foods are derived either from cereals such as wheat, barley, rye, maize, or rice, or starchy tubers or root vegetables such as potatoes, yams, taro, and cassava.^[2] Other staple foods include pulses (dried legumes), sago (derived from the pith of the sago palm tree), and fruits such as breadfruit and plantains.^[3] Staple foods may also contain, depending on the region, sorghum, olive oil, coconut oil and sugar (e.g. from plantains).^[4][5][6] Most staples are plant materials, but in some communities fishing is the primary source of nutrition.^[7]

Demographic profile of staple foods

Average kcal/person/day, 1979-1981

Average kcal/person/day, 2001-2003

  no data

  <1600

  1600-1800

  1800-2000

  2000-2200

  2200-2400

  2400-2600

  2600-2800

  2800-3000

  3000-3200

  3200-3400

  3400-3600

  >3600

Food energy consumption per person, per day, worldwide. Except for war-torn countries, the world is eating more staples per capita per day, despite rising world population.

Of more than 50,000 edible plant species in the world, only a few hundred contribute significantly to human food supplies. Just 15 crop plants provide 90 percent of the world's food energy intake (exclusive of meat), with rice, maize and wheat comprising two-thirds of human food consumption. The three are the staples of over 4 billion people.^[8]

Although there are over 10,000 species in the cereal family, just a few have been widely cultivated over the past 2,000 years. Rice feeds almost half of humanity. Roots and tubers are important staples for over 1 billion people in the developing world, accounting for roughly 40 percent of the food eaten by half the population of sub-Saharan Africa. Cassava is another major staple food in the developing world, providing a basic diet for around 500 million people. Roots and tubers are high in carbohydrates, calcium and vitamin C but low in protein.

The staple food in different parts of the world is a function of weather patterns, local terrain, farming constraints, acquired tastes and ecosystems. For example, the main energy source staples in the average African diet are cereals (46 percent), roots and tubers (20 percent) and animal products (7 percent). In Western Europe the main staples in the average diet are animal products (33 percent), cereals (26 percent) and roots and tubers (4 percent).

Most of the global human population lives on a diet based on one or more of the following staples: rice, wheat, maize (corn), millet, sorghum, roots and tubers (potatoes, cassava, yams and taro) and animal products such as meat, milk, eggs, cheese and fish. Regional staples include rye, soybeans, barley, oats and teff.

With economic development and free trade, many countries have shifted away from low-nutrient-density staple foods, to higher-nutrient-density staple foods, as well as towards greater meat consumption. Despite this trend, there is growing recognition of the importance of traditional staple crops in nutrition. Efforts are underway to identify better strains with superior nutrition, disease resistance and higher yields.

Some foods such as quinoa—a pseudocereal grain that originally came from the Andes—were also staple foods centuries ago.^[9] Oca, ulluco and amaranth seed are other foods claimed to be staples in Andean history.^[10] Pemmican was a staple of the Plains Indians of North America.^[11] In 2010, the global consumption of speciality grains such as quinoa was very small compared to other staples such as rice, wheat and maize. These grains, once popular but then forgotten, are being re-evaluated and reintroduced.

Refining

Rice is most commonly eaten as cooked entire grains but most other cereals are milled into flour or meal, which is used to make bread, noodles or other pasta, porridges and "mushes" such as mealie pap. Mashed root vegetables can be used to make similar porridge-like dishes, including poi and fufu. Pulses (particularly chickpeas) and starchy root vegetables such as canna can also be made into flour.

Part of a whole

Maize, the most produced food staple in the world.

Although nutritious, vegetable staples generally do not provide a full range of nutrients, so other foods need to be added to the diet, to ward off malnutrition. The deficiency disease pellagra is associated with a diet consisting primarily of maize and beriberi with a diet of white (i.e., refined) rice.^[16]

Nutritional content

The following table shows the nutrient content of major staple vegetable foods in raw form. Raw grains are not edible and cannot be digested. These must be sprouted or prepared and cooked for human consumption. In sprouted and cooked form, the relative nutritional and anti-nutritional contents of each of these grains is remarkably different from that of raw form of these grains reported in this table.

Note: The highlighted value is the highest nutrient density amongst these staples. Other foods of the world, consumed in smaller quantities, may have nutrient densities higher than these values.

Production

Most staple food is produced using modern farming practices. However, the yield of staple food from organic farming is growing.

Gallery of food staples

• 

  Boiled white rice

• 

  Bread made from wheat flour

• 

  Kidney beans

• 

  Amaranth (left) and wheat

• 

  Cassava

• 

  Sweet potato

• 

  Edamame - green soybeans

• 

  Sorghum seeds (left) and popped sorghum

• 

  Japanese yam

• 

  Plantains

• 

  Ulluco

• 

  Oca

• 

  Taro

• 

  Millet

• 

  Quinoa

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Staple food.

• Famine food
• Cash crop
• List of foods
• Maize
• Rice
• Vavilov Center

References