Question: Why is food called food? What are all the different food groups?

Grant Campbell answered on 9 Mar 2013:

@auddie25. Good question. The word “food” is from the Anglo Saxon word “foda”. Many of our “ordinary” English words come from Anglo-Saxon, whereas posher words come from Latin or French (e.g. “sleepwalk” is from Anglo-Saxon, “somnambulate” is from Latin). So, a posher word for food is “nourishment”, which is from French “nourir”. But for such a common thing, the word “food” is odd in that there isn’t a related adjective – i.e. the equivalent of “food-ish”! So it can be hard to construct simple sentences to describe food-related things – we tend to have to use much more complex words like “gastronomic” (from Greek “gaster” = belly) and “gustatory” (from Latin “gustus”, to taste).

What are all the different food groups? Harold McGee structures his book “On Food and Cooking” into:
MIlk and dairy
Eggs
Meat
Fish and Shellfish
Edible plants: vegetables, fruits, herbs and spices (he also includes mushrooms in here, although they are fungi, not plants)
Seeds: grains, legumes and nuts
Cereal-based foods: bread, cakes, pastry, pasta (to which we could add Breakfast cereals)
Sugars, Chocolate and Confectionary
Wine, Beer and Distilled Spirits

Meanwhile, The Oxford Companion to Food has over 3000 entries, so there are a lot of different foods under these categories!

I hope this answer helps!