Introduction
When we go to the store, any store, to buy food, how is it that we decide what we want and need to buy? Are our food purchases made because we are hungry while shopping? Are our food purchases part of our subconscious memories of television advertisements that told us what foods taste best? Are our food purchases based on some radio advertisement or on billboard displays we may have driven pass on our way to the store? Are our food purchases based on what friends and family have told us they have enjoyed, so we feel we must honor their suggestions and try the foods out for ourselves; because the next time we speak with this friend or family member we do not want to have not tried the food? Any one of the mentioned scenarios are often part of the food decision process, food decisions are often made based on convenience and emotion. Few if any of us are able to divorce ourselves from the power of pervasive persuasion. It is a rare occasion that food decisions are based solely on what we know is best for our own health and the health of the Earth planet.
The majority of Americans make food decisions based on our trust in what we are told by food advertisements, health professionals, friends, and tradition. Food decisions seem relatively easy on the surface, but if we probe just below the surface we will find ourselves with truckloads (literally) of food facts that are overwhelming and rather startling. We will find that the foods we eat are not the foods are grandparents ate or our parents in many cases.
Food is business, gigantic business, and the food business is not for the faint of heart, or those seeking good nutrition, or those particularly concerned with our Earthly environment.
Food like air and water is essential to all living things; we eat to live, food is the energy of living, food determines health, the better we eat the better we live. We cannot equate life with car size or make, home size or location, college degrees obtained or not; we can equate life with good nutrition, which comes directly from our food. Yes, we should and must exercise, but exercise and any movement for that matter requires food energy; living without exercise is not intelligent, but it can be done; living without food is not possible.
Food comes directly from the Earth's soil, be it plant or animal. Everything we put into our soil or remove from it determines how much food and the quality of food we will be able to put into our bodies. Growing food, plant and animal, requires energy, and it is in the food energy production that it seems we have grown into a culture where convenience determines our decisions.
Food energy usage is where our decisions are not solely our own, because it is here that our information about what we are eating fades into a vast hole of ambiguity. Most of the food purchased at grocery stores will be labeled with a host of nutritional facts, but what do all those facts really mean to the average consumer? If the consumer is counting calories, is interested in sodium content, or concerned with how many grams of sugar per serving, then the nutritional facts may be useful. Keep in mind, the foods that are best for us are not labeled with nutritional facts; go figure that one out.
This energy-food-production and waste unit will introduce you to basic facts about how a few foods make it from small seeds to landfills, and the energy usage along the seed to landfill journey.
This energy-food-production and waste unit is intended to give you enough information so that you may teach your students about how food and the environment are intertwined; and how energy begins, transfers, and ends our ability to eat food.
This unit is comprised of three lessons, and a project. Each lesson is crafted with the intention of informing, inspiring, and initiating a change in the way students and educators think about food production and waste. The lessons are welded in such a way where the students will take their gained three areas of knowledge and create a virtual world where they have the opportunity to make decisions about food and waste as food and waste relate to community.
When all members of the classroom community are engaged, learning, having fun, and examining ways to improve the way we all live, I will feel satisfied with what I have written.
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