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Having first defined the term food in previous articles and differentiated the German term "Lebensmittel" from the often synonymously used term "Nahrungsmittel", we will now give a rough overview of the various food groups and subgroups.

Outstanding features of the tropics are the almost constant day length throughout the year, with the sun always high at midday and the annually recurring rainy season. In addition, biodiversity is more pronounced in the tropical regions than in all other climate zones.¹⁾

The subtropics lie between the tropics and the cool temperate zones. They are characterised by significant temperature differences between summer and winter as well as between the rainy and dry seasons.

The temperate zone is characterised by the clearly visible and noticeable change of seasons. Hardly any extreme temperatures are measured and precipitation falls throughout the year. In summer as rain or hail, in winter also as snow.

Formally speaking, the subpolar zone forms the transition between the polar zone and the cold-temperate climate zone. In this category, we include the regions with the tundra landscape type, which occurs in almost all high-altitude areas above the tree line due to the climatic conditions, but also include the cold-temperate zone of boreal coniferous forests.

The polar zone refers to the regions in the far north and south of the globe, namely the Arctic and Antarctic. The polar regions are characterised by long, very cold winters with permanently glaciated regions, ice deserts and permafrost soils with several months of prolonged darkness.