To be clear, I want to categorize all kinds of food and drink items (including fruits, vegetables, edible flowers, roots, cooked dishes, cakes, sweets, wines… the list goes on) into maybe 5 categories. I can add sub categories under those main categories.
I thought it would be a good idea to ask the cooking community before committing to my current ideas.
How would you categorize them? I can find on websites but they contain millions of categories. I need all food fall under 5 or less categories 
Drinks
Proteins
Carbs
Sweet things
Fruit & Veg
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I think you’ve got it @Harters.
Where would gravy fit in this model?
Gravy helped found America 
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Mushrooms? Technically, neither a fruit nor vegetable, and clearly none of the others. Similarly, corn smut, a.k.a. huitlacoche.
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Alcohol based
Other
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See @Respectfully_Declined. And I think we can have.
- Gravy
- Pies
- Beer
- Not worth bothering with.
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Flora
Fauna
Sweet
Savory
Alcoholic
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You are all too funny today!
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I’d convert @Harters’ list into a matrix. On the other axis: things I’d eat/consume and things I wouldn’t.
That’s a few more new ways to look at it. But seriously I like the ideas of @Harters and @small_h but flora and fauna sounds more “botanical” i guess. Also carbs and sweets would overlap I guess?
oh yes for me there’s a lot of food items that fall into category 4 lol.
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Fauna means animals. So if you wanted a very rough way to split plants from not plants, flora/fauna works pretty well.
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You might slip in the bacon 
category.
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Hi there! There are research techniques called card sorting and tree testing or treejacking—silly sounding word, I know—that website teams use to help them understand where their intended site visitors would look to find something on their site.
I have not conducted this research myself, though team(s) I have worked on always uncovered surprises as a result of running such research with users. As in: People sometimes look in different places than you thought to find what they are looking for.
If you are curious to know more, you can find a write up about card sorting and tree testing here. Fair warning that this info is long and detailed, so it may be a deeper dive than you want or even need for your purposes!
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A lesson I learned early on when I was trying to work how how I should index the first of my books. For example, references to “apple pie” probably needs to be indexed under “apple”, “pies” and “desserts”
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I once did card sorting for a major investment website overhaul. It was an interesting exercise.
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Good one. The more things change, the more they stay the same in my opinion.
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This is a brilliant idea. But mine doesn’t need that much of dedication for now. Actually the website is just for me as a hobby, so nothing much really. But I will read about card sorting and try to get a good idea about the techniques which will come handy elsewhere I’m sure.
I’ll share the website when it’s done 
if the admins permit of course.
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Applause to you for researching to any extent. 
I hope that your project is rewarding!
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