We eat food for many reasons. When we are hungry, we eat. We also eat because we enjoy eating things like sweets or chips. When we celebrate, we eat. We may celebrate our victory or birthday. Even during rituals like cultural or religious, we eat. So humans are different from animals who eat only when they are hungry.
We can eat food in different ways and forms. We can eat ripe mango or banana, that is very flavourful, just after peeling as such. We can also make a pulp of the fruit and add sugar & cream and freeze it and eat as ice cream. We can add water and make juice. There are many other products we can make out of fruit like cake, jam, spread, dried fruit etc. So there are many ways in which we can eat food. Fruits like mango are seasonal, so in order to enjoy it when they are not available fresh, we can make many products that last for a long time. Such foods like meat, eggs, milk, vegetables and fruit, are all prone to spoilage. These need to be consumed soon or should be processed and/or converted into different products for later consumption. Fish and fruits are dried. Vegetables and meat are frozen. Milk is pasteurised and chilled for storage of a few days. For longer storage it needs to be concentrated and canned or may be dried to powder. There are various products that are made from foods. Fish, meat and vegetables could be pickled while fruits have been made into a large number of products like jam, jellies, preserves by adding sugar as preservative or could also be canned.
Thus, we can eat fresh foods when available and store them as products, so they are not wasted due to spoilage.
Food science helps to process the fresh foods into various products and while it tries to maintain the quality of the food with respect to safety and sensory attributes, it also helps to reduce the losses of nutrients occurring during process and storage.
Food Science Nutrified 