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To start this project, you will need to go home tonight and make a list of everything you eat afterschool until you go to bed. Include, all of the following you may eat : snacks, drinks, dinner and dessert. Then, categorize the food as to whether it is plant or animal.

Next, write all plant foods, by type, across the top of a sheet paper, making columns. One set of these pages will have your plant foods across the top. Another set of pages will have your animal foods across the top.

Now, one by one, think about how that food came to your table. What were its ingredients ? In your head, imagine your parents going to the store to buy it, imagine the shopkeepers getting it by truck and putting it on the shelf. Then imagine the truck driver and warehouse that it came from. And who made the product before it was brought to that warehouse? What are its ingredients ? Where was it produced ? Imagine that factory or farm.

Before that food was produced and packaged, it came from a farm or production facility of some type. In fact, it may be made of ingredients that came from many different types of farms or other production facilities.

Under each food you listed, make another list of that foods individual ingredients, and under each ingredient, save room to list how that ingredient was made. For example, if it had salt in it – save room to write down where that salt might have come from. A little lower on the page write down the next ingredient and save room to fill in its sources, and so on.

If you listed any food that had milk in it, you will need to consider that inorder for the milk to be added to the product it had to come from a cow that was milked on a farm. And in order to make the milk herself, the cow had to eat grass. And inorder for the grass to grow, it had to have what ? Figuring this out is how this project works.

If you listed any food that had beef in it, you have to think about the cattle that was slaughtered for the meat to make the food. In order for that cattle to grow fat enough to be a food source, it had to eat more than just grass like a diary cow. The cattle are fed soybeans. These soybeans do not grow in the fields where the cattle live. The soy beans are imported from another farm somewhere else that grows the soy beans. So, the history of the beef is that it fed on plants (soy beans for example) and those plants had to be grown by yet another business. And the beans themselves had to have fed on something else… It’s for you to figure out where this whole cycle started.

If you listed popcorn, then you have to think about where those dried kernels came from. What plant did they grow on ? And what did that plant need to eat inorder to grow the popcorn kernels ?

1. Is the last thing on each food’s list the same or different ?
2. Where did the last thing on each list come from ?
3. Which of the types of lists has longer entries in the individual columns – plant or animal foods ?
4. Why is one longer ?
5. Who is at the top of this food chain list ?
6. Which of the foods that you ate requires the least levels of work to make (counting all levels of work, not just human)?
7. Which of the foods that you ate took the most human effort ?
8. The least human effort ?
9. Which of the foods you ate were the six most expensive to produce ?
10. The most expensive animal food ?
11. The most expensive plant food ?
12. Are the foods with the longest list and levels of ingredients the most expensive ? Or the least ? Or does it vary ?
13. In order to feed the world’s millions of hungry children, it makes sense to find nutritious food (high food value) that is the least expensive to feed them (note : it will not be junk food). Which of the high protein foods that you ate do you think would be the least expensive to feed the world’s hungry children ?
14. Is there any other protein rich food you know of that would be even better to feed the world’s hungry children, based on its high food value and its low cost ? What is that food ?
15. Would your family save money and eat better if it too ate this same high protein food ?