The Story of Food
For this project, I learned about the story of food, from the soil, to the animal or plant it is harvested from, the farm it comes from, the transportation to stores and how it finally ends up in your fridge or pantry. We did this by watching videos, doing research, and projects throughout this unit.
Shown here is our final presentation and project about the questions you can ask about food and what you should ask yourself before you buy it. We chose the teach and learn category and we tried to teach others about what they could ask themselves when buying food to be healthy. We tried to pose meaningful questions that someone could ask about the food they eat to further their understanding of what they are putting into their body.
Some concepts we talked about were: industrialized farms, local farms, the travel and web of food, and how processed foods are made and their ingredients.
Industrialized farms are large farms which usually grow corn, or other hardy crops and are harvested by machines or in large quantities.
Local farms are small, usually family farms or smaller farms which usually grow more delicate crops, such as tomatoes. These crops need to be handpicked and usually deliver locally to houses and restaurants.
The web and travel of food is how food from different parts of the world travel to stores and dinner plates. Fish from Alaska, tomatoes from Sacramento, corn from Iowa, and other ingredients all make it to your plate. My previous example doesn't even take into account different foods from countries all around the world.
Most processed foods have corn in them. This comes in the form of high fructose corn syrup, which is in most sodas and fast foods. This processed food is easy and cheap to make and it can be grown and harvested on large industrialized farms.
Two things I did good this project was having a good work ethic and being a conscientious learner. Throughout this unit and especially in the final project I was working hard and never faltered once, and I also learned a lot of new information about where our food comes from; and I want to learn more. Two things I didn't do very well this project were communicating and were sometimes being distracted. During this project, sometimes I failed to communicate to my group. This didn't cause any problems but if I communicated better throughout the project I think we could have finished work quicker. I also got distracted sometimes. This didn't cause any late work or delay in our project but I think we could have finished it earlier if I stayed more on target. I will make sure to do this in the next project.