Where food comes from
Design & Technology · Early Years · The School
Grown, reared or caught
Apples, wheat and carrots are GROWN. Chickens, sheep and cows are REARED. Fish are CAUGHT or farmed. Sort ten foods from your kitchen into those three groups and see which is biggest.
Above and below
Carrots, potatoes and onions grow underground. Apples and dates grow on trees. Wheat, rice and beans grow on plants in fields. Many children guess wrongly about potatoes, which is worth knowing rather than being embarrassed about.
What happens in between
Wheat becomes flour becomes bread. Milk becomes cheese. Very little arrives in a shop the way it left the field, and every step in between is somebody's job. Following one food from field to plate is a good piece of D&T.
A fish finger came out of a box. Before that: a factory coated it in breadcrumbs and froze it. Before that: the fish was filleted. Before that: it was CAUGHT at sea. So — grown, reared or caught? Caught. Now do the same for bread (wheat, grown), a sausage (a pig, reared) and a carrot (grown, underground). Every food has that chain, and the shop is only the last link.
Not everything is ready at the same time
Strawberries are ready in summer. Apples come in autumn. Carrots and potatoes keep for months in the dark, which is why they seem to be around all year. Food that is not in season here has usually travelled a long way — in a lorry, a ship or a plane — to reach the shop. Next time you are shopping, find the little country name printed on a bag of fruit. It tells you how far your lunch came before it got to you, and it is often further than you have ever been.