Food Families
Food families allow you to determine which foods are closely related.
- Related foods have similar characteristics.
- Related foods may provoke the same delayed food allergies.
Biologists have arranged the species of plants and animals into a taxonomy, a type of hierarchy, that shows the relationships between the species. There is, for example, a plant kingdom and an animal kingdom, and each are divided into phylums, classes, orders, families, genuses, and down to the level of the species.
The family is the taxonomic rank usually used to consider the relationships of foods.
Lists of Families
Here are some common foods that are listed in family groups that make it easy to see the relationships between the foods.
Similar Characteristics
Foods in the same family often share characteristics, such as:
- Related phytochemicals ("plant chemicals") in cancer-fighting Brassica vegetables
- Related phytochemicals in nightshade vegetables
- Similarities in the meat from related bovine animals (cows, bison, goats, sheep)
Allergy Considerations
If a food provokes allergy symptoms or makes you ill in any way (such as headaches, stomach ache, diarrhea), its relatives in the same family:
- May provoke the same or similar symptoms
- May provoke different symptoms
- Simply stress your body enough to overload its capacity for the food