Use as food source

Onions are primarily used as a food source, in cooking as the start off ingredient in Indian and other Asian cooking, in making onion soups and chutneys, raw in salads and as pickles in vinega. Onions are a major source of polyphenols in general, and also of flavonoids (a very important subdivision of polyphenols). They can also vary greatly in their polyphenol and flavonoid content. In general, red onions are higher in total flavonoids than white onions, (with yellow onions falling somewhere in between).