1. Breakfast to go
Moving Products
What did you have for breakfast this morning?
How did that breakfast make its way to your kitchen?
The short answer to the questions you were asked above might be “food” and “my parents bought it.” That food however came from somewhere. Sometimes it came from multiple places. While it is true that people travel to a store and purchase groceries, the movement of that product from the store to their home is only one step in a longer journey.
If you had cereal like Mini Wheats for breakfast, it’s possible you used a brand that was created in Belleville Ontario at a cerial plant that opened in 2008 and employs more than 100 people. Kellog's foods has their headquarters in Battle Creek Michigan, and their cereals are manufactured and sold world wide. The factory in Battle Creek, as well as others around the country and world produces many kinds of cereal which you may have eaten this morning.Some might be tempted to say that the journey of the product from the store to a home begins at the factory, but that is still not the case. All of the parts of a product, such as ingredients for making cereal, come from places outside of the factory. It could come from local sources, or much farther away - across a state, the country, or even the world.
Activity -
Use the internet to find the ingredients in one breakfast cereal of your choice. Then, pick any three ingredients (such as rice, sugar, or salt) to find out where in Canada these materials might come from.
If it does not come from the Canada, where else might it come from?
How might those ingredients “move” to the factory in which they are processed and turned into cereal?
The journey of an ingredient for cereal could begin hundreds or thousands of miles away from your house. If you live in Ontario, however, it is quite possible that they made their way to Battle Creek to be made into your breakfast this morning.It doesn’t necessarily matter where your cereal was created. Often times after production it is taken to centralized warehouses which deliver the products to many regional stores.
The goods travel over land and by air depending on the distance they must travel. All goods and products move in this way. If your family goes to a local farmers market and purchases apples, the journey from the farm to you may have been a relatively short one, but the product still moved.
If your family purchases a Canadian made car from Ford, Toyota or Hyundai, the parts may have came from all over the world, and it’s possible that it was even assembled in a plant in Ontario. From apples to cars, to the breakfast you ate this morning, the theme of movement is taking place all across your town, your state, the country, and the wo
