Table 4.
Definitions
| Definiendum | Definition(s) |
|---|---|
| Diet | Customary course of living as to food: way of feeding; a prescribed programme of food of a defined kind and/or quantity |
| Dietary regimen | A programme of food, of a defined kind and/or quantity, prescribed or adopted for the restoration or preservation of health or the prevention of illness and disease |
| Dietary supplement | 1. A substance added to the diet, often taken as a pharmaceutical formulation, to treat or prevent a deficiency |
| 2. [Also used to mean a substance added to the diet to enhance (actually or supposedly) growth, health, or well‐being] | |
| Eat | To take into the mouth piecemeal, masticate, and swallow as food; to consume food |
| Food | 1. Any nutritious substance that people or animals eat or drink in order to maintain life and growth |
| 2. Any item that is to be processed, partially processed, or unprocessed for consumption, and that is intended to be, or reasonably expected to be, ingested by humans | |
| Foodstuffs | Particular substances suitable for consumption as food |
| Fortified foods (also called ‘designer foods’) | Foodstuffs to which compounds of proven therapeutic or preventive efficacy have been added |
| Functional food | [No satisfactory definition] |
| Herb | A plant of which the stem does not become woody and persistent (as in a shrub or a tree) but remains more or less soft and succulent, and dies down to the ground (or entirely) after flowering; spec. applied to plants of which the leaves, or stem and leaves, are used for food or medicine, or in some way for their scent or flavour |
| Herbal medicinal product | Any medicinal product, exclusively containing as active ingredients one or more herbal substances or one or more herbal preparations, or one or more such herbal substances in combination with one or more such herbal preparations |
| Herbal preparation | A preparation that is obtained by subjecting herbal substances to treatments such as extraction, distillation, expression, fractionation, purification, concentration, or fermentation |
| Herbal substance | A substance that consists of mainly whole, fragmented, or cut plants, plant parts, algae, fungi, or lichen in an unprocessed, usually dried form but sometimes fresh |
| Medicinal product (synonyms medicine and medicament) | A product that contains a compound with proven pharmacological and beneficial therapeutic effects, a drug, prodrug, or a cellular element, plus excipients, or excipients only; it may also contain adulterants or contaminants |
| Nutraceutical | [No satisfactory definition] |
| Nutrition | 1. The action or process of supplying, or of receiving, nourishment or food; nutritious content |
| 2. The state or condition of being (well or badly) nourished; a person's state of health | |
| Nutritional medicinal products | Foods or formulations containing nutritional ingredients from which specific nutrients have been omitted |
| Pharmaceutical formulation (also called a ‘dosage form’) | The form in which a medicinal product is presented, e.g. a tablet, capsule, elixir, solution for injection, transdermal formulation, cream, or ointment |