How many varieties of food are there in the world?

Let us ponder over this question a bit.Can you really predict it? The simplest answer is no.There are thousands of varieties of raw materials for making food. There are at least 500 types of plants, predictably 100 types of meat and a thousand spices and herbs and a million ways to mix them. Food is an item that has evolved based on geographical location, historical preferences, natural availability of ingredients and condiments.

If you had to predict, one could say that there are around a million varieties of food. Some varieties of foods have been classified into cuisine based on the way and the place they are made. But each cuisine boasts of 100's of dishes. For example, pizza has hundreds of ways it could be made. Foods that are parts of cuisines are available all around the globe and new geographical locations add new tastes and flavors and new ways of cooking. For example, the burger as a food originated in the Hamburg region of Germany but evolved in the U.S.A.