Nutrition is an important subject in these days of health awareness and consciousness. With medical treatment becoming highly expensive and out of the reach of the common man, prevention seems to be the better alternative that cure. In this context, food, its values and the way it affects our bodies and health has gained widespread importance. Food nutrition and health are interrelated terms, which gained keen attention at large after significant achievements/findings of recent investigations and researches in the field. Though modern food science owes a lot to the scientific researches in the West, ancient Indian system of health and medicine, known as Ayurveda has clearly touched these aspects elaborately. Dietary minerals are the chemical elements required by living organisms, other than the four elements carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen that are present in nearly all organic molecules. The term “mineral” is archaic, since the intent is to describe simply the less common elements in the diet. The book defines nutrition and food science in simpler terms as “the application of basic sciences and engineering to study the physical, chemical, and biochemical nature of foods and the principles of food processing.