The Chinese word 食品 is formed by logically combining two meaningful characters: 食 (shí), which means "to eat" or "food", and 品 (pǐn), which means "item", "product", or "article". The combination directly and intuitively creates the concept of an "edible product" or "food item", where the first character defines the category (eating/food) and the second character specifies the type of thing within that category (a commodity or good).