What's the name for the individual units of small foods?

Question

I have two sections where I differentiate between "types" of foods: powder and small foods. I want a replacement for "small foods" with a single word the represents foods where they are small items which make up a larger group of the food (think nuts, candies, fruits, etc.).

Specifically, what are the elements within a group of the small foods called? In a handful of almonds, what is each almond of this handful generally referred to as? I'm looking for a word that can mean one or more and relates to having one or more of a type of small food.

Answer 1

Having looked up up morsel and granule, I think that grain is going to be the best fit for what you are looking for:

2 A single fruit or seed of a cereal. ‘a few grains of corn’

2.1 A small hard particle of a substance such as salt or sand. ‘a grain of salt’

2.2 The smallest possible quantity or amount of a quality. ‘there wasn't a grain of truth in what he said’

2.3 A discrete particle or crystal in a metal, igneous rock, etc., typically visible only when a surface is magnified.

It it includes both the food connotation and the idea of a single, discrete unit that you are looking for.

Answer 2

I don't think you're likely to do better than item (or unit) for something so broad. You could talk about a nut, a toffee, a piece of fudge etc., but there's no more generic term that applies to food specifically.

In stock control systems the unit of measure for individual items like this is each or EA (leading to the horrible phrase per each meaning per unit). There may be a way to rephrase it and use each without a grammatical abomination, but it's not a noun which makes things harder.