Food For Thought

Food for Thought is our Grade Level Project for the end of the first semester, and its purpose is to connect food to personal identity through creativity, reflection, and education. 

In our History class, we are examining food’s connection to the historical event of the Columbian exchange. The Columbian Exchange created a vast amount of new dishes, as each hemisphere exchanged different crops and livestock. To study this, we had a Columbian Exchange cook-off in which participants brought ingredients from one of the hemispheres and were grouped randomly to create a dish that related to their hemisphere. 

In Geometry, we are studying the statistical, scientific, and mathematical effects of food deserts on communities and working together to crate solutions. Using mapping and dilations, we are creating examples of possible solutions for real-life examples of food deserts and swamps in the Atlanta area.

We have been studying the tie between identity and food with our Literature section of the Food for Thought project. After reading “How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents”, we explored the character’s relationship to their identity as women, immigrants, wives, mothers, and sisters. Next, we worked within our groups to decide upon a recipe that tied to our collective identities. We also included one ingredient that was included in the Columbian Exchange. Lastly, we reflected upon how food can relate to one’s identity and culture.

For Chemistry, we tied our work closely to our literature project. In our Chemistry project, we worked to explain the chemical bonds that occurred in the process of cooking our recipe for our Literature project. This helped us tie in scientific fact to food.

Finally, for Art, we looked as the vessels and utensils that different cultures and identities used during and after the Columbian Exchange. Then in groups, we worked together to brainstorm and sketch ideas for our own place setting tied to the Columbian Exchange. We worked with clay to create our separate pieces of the lace settings, and then glazed them to create a visually appealing cohesive set. We also created a digital art placemat design based off of food available in our area.