Where Food Comes From
Where food comes from: which foods are grown, reared or caught (wheat, apples, milk, fish); how ingredients travel from farms and seas to shops; seasonality, and why some fruits and vegetables are only picked at certain times of year
What a learner can do afterwards
- Say whether familiar foods are grown, reared or caught (e.g. bread starts as wheat, fish fingers as fish)
- Describe the steps between farm and plate for one food (e.g. milk goes from cow to dairy to bottle)
- Name fruits or vegetables that are in season at different times of year (e.g. strawberries in summer)
1 · Read
Every food starts somewhere. Bread starts as wheat, a plant that grows in fields. Fish fingers start as fish, caught in the sea. Milk comes from cows on a farm.
Mia eats toast for breakfast. The bread came from wheat. Farmers grew the wheat in fields. Then the wheat became flour, and the flour became bread.
Not all fruits grow all year round. Strawberries taste best in summer. That is when they are in season.
Foods are grown, reared or caught, then travel to your plate.
More to read
8.1 Overview of Photosynthesis
Plants cook their own food from sunshine, air, and water. Leaves catch sunlight with green colouring and mix it with air and sucked up water. Out comes sugar to grow on, plus fresh air for us. Wheat, apples, and carrots are all sunshine turned solid. Every grown food starts as this quiet kitchen in a leaf.
Sunshine also sets the seasons. Strawberries ripen in summer, apples in autumn, and many vegetables have their own months too. That is why some foods are cheap and plentiful at certain times of year and gone at others.
How to Hatch Chicken Eggs
Reared food comes from animals people look after. Hens lay the eggs you eat for breakfast. Keep eggs warm for three weeks, either under a broody hen or in an incubator, and chicks peck their way out. Chicks grow into hens that lay again. Cows give milk, sheep give wool plus lambs. Farmers feed, shelter, and guard these animals. Eggs on your plate trace back to a clucking hen.
Milk makes a longer trip: a cow is milked on the farm, the milk travels to a dairy to be made safe and bottled, then a shop sells it. Farm to dairy to bottle to you.
How to Fish
Caught food comes from wild water. Fishers use rods, nets, and boats to bring in cod, salmon, and tuna. Fish travel from sea to shop quickly, packed on ice to stay fresh. Rules limit catches so seas never run empty. Next time you see fish fingers, picture the boat, the waves, and the early morning harbour. Some dinners are hunted, not grown.
Explore more
2 · Watch
به انگلیسیTake it off screen
Where it sits
Learn first
Nothing; this is a starting point.
Optional connections
Where this leads
8 questions wait behind this lesson, each with its answer explained. Every answer feeds the sky: stars light as they are learned, and dim when it is time to come back.