The Important Food Crops and Medicinal Plants of North-western Nigeria

Food is any substance, which provides an organism with energy and nutrients necessary for its existence. To maintain good health people must daily eat both energy producing food (carbohydrates and fats) and a proper balance of the other nutrients (proteins, vitamin minerals and water). Most people in the world cannot afford the luxury of selecting a daily diet that contains both dairy and meat products. Instead they rely heavily on plant products as their source of food, for their greatly needed calories and proteins. It is estimated that on a global scale plants directly provide 88 percent of the calories (i.e. carbohydrates and fats) and 80 percent of proteins that human beings consume the rest come from animal products. The medicinal use of certain plants has been almost as important to man as their food uses. Men learnt to exploit plants for medicine, almost as early as they cultivated them for food. This review is intended to document some food and medicinal plants of importance in North-western states of Nigeria.