Food vs. Cuisine — What's the Difference?

Food is any substance consumed to provide nutritional support for an organism. Food is usually of plant, animal or fungal origin, and contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals.

A cuisine is a style of cooking characterized by distinctive ingredients, techniques and dishes, and usually associated with a specific culture or geographic region. Regional food preparation traditions, customs and ingredients often combine to create dishes unique to a particular region.A cuisine is primarily influenced by the ingredients that are available locally or through trade, they can even be made into distinct ingredients themselves when they become popular within a region, take for example Japanese rice in Japanese cuisine and New Mexico chile in New Mexican cuisine.

Any nutritious substance that people or animals eat or drink or that plants absorb in order to maintain life and growth

A characteristic manner or style of preparing food

Material, especially carbohydrates, fats, and proteins, that an organism uses for energy, growth, and maintaining the processes of life. Plants, algae, and some bacteria make their own food through photosynthesis, while animals and most other organisms obtain food by consuming other organisms or organic matter.

Food; fare.

A specified kind of nourishment

A characteristic style of preparing food, often associated with a place of origin.

Nourishment eaten in solid form

(uncountable) culinary art: The art of preparing food, generally.

Something that nourishes or sustains in a way suggestive of physical nourishment

A kitchen or cooking department.

(uncountable) Any solid substance that can be consumed by living organisms, especially by eating, in order to sustain life.

The kitchen or cooking department.

(countable) A foodstuff.

Manner or style of cooking.

Anything that nourishes or sustains.

The practice or manner of preparing food or the food so prepared

What is fed upon; that which goes to support life by being received within, and assimilated by, the organism of an animal or a plant; nutriment; aliment; especially, what is eaten by animals for nourishment.

Anything that instructs the intellect, excites the feelings, or molds habits of character; that which nourishes.

To supply with food.

Any substance that can be metabolized by an organism to give energy and build tissue

Any solid substance (as opposed to liquid) that is used as a source of nourishment;

Anything that provides mental stimulus for thinking