CLP date:  1/14/2011

Today in class we started with a quite check-in.

Check-in question:  ”If you could be a fruit, which one would you be and why?”

We then moved on to a discussion about how food arrives on our plates.  We began by asking what did you have to eat last night?  There was multiple answers; chicken with rice, Jack in the box, enchiladas, beef and carrots, etc.  I went ahead and wrote their answers on a whiteboard.  We had a mixed of healthy and not so healthy food.  I followed up with a question where did you get the ingredients for your meal?  Again there were multiple answers the store, El Super, my mom bought the stuff…    we all agreed they came from a store, so I wrote Store on whiteboard.  The next question was, where does the store get its produce?… and let’s focus on the carrots, since there many options at the store.  Most start calling out Farm!  I write down farm at the opposite side of the whiteboard.  It is true that carrots come from a farm, but how do the carrots get to the store?  The students soon answer they get transported by trucks, so I write down truck next to the farm.  Where does the truck take the carrots?  The students answer the store… In some cases that might be true, but in most cases it takes a few extra steps.  Think about how you buy your carrots, sometimes they come in a bag, so they need to be transported and packaged… lets write down packaging company on the whiteboard.  Once the carrots are packaged where do they go?  To the store they answer, not yet there still other places the carrots go.    They go to distribution centers in different cities and from there the stores purchase the carrots… lets write down distribution center… at this point I start drawing a line connecting all the different players.  Once I connected the line to the farm, I told the students “you just described the food system”.  This is how carrots get to your plate!