ABSTRACT
FOOD - WHAT IS IT? Any discussion of 'food' is fraught with the semantic problem of the word 'food' having different meanings in everyday and scientific contexts and there are no ready alternative words to offer pupils in either context. The school science definition of food, as organic compounds which organisms can use as a source of energy for metabolic processes, is not consistently used even by science educators. Moreover, the word 'food', when used in science lessons, is used in a variety of ways both by teachers and in textbooks.
