OBJECTIVE

Students will understand how food differs around the world

ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS

What is food culture? How and why do food cultures differ around the world? What are the differences between local and global food systems and how do they affect food cultures?

MATERIALS NEEDED

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PROCEDURE

Lesson 1: Family Food traditions
Guiding Question: What can we learn about culture through the foods we eat?
• Review rules for respectful listening and interviewing
• Activity: Students take turns interviewing each other in groups of 3: 1 interviewer, 1
speaker, 1 recorder. 10 minutes for each role, then switch. Create Venn diagrams
• Discuss family, community, and identity and have students give examples from their interviews of how food nourishes these three things.

Lesson 2: Food around the world
Guiding Questions: How and why do food cultures differ around the world? What do food cultures tell us about a people?
• Writing prompt: Select the families whose life you feel differences the most form your own. Compare and contrast your own diet, kitchen, and methods of food preparation to those of this family. Despite the differences between your family and this one, are there any significant similarities?
• Discuss:
o Write down a food that is valued by your own family and the family in your
picture? Why does your family value that food? How and why do different
cultures come to value particular foods?
o How are food traditions influenced by place? By economic opportunity?

Field Trip to The Farm Institute: Local Food Systems
Guiding Questions: Where does food come from? What are the differences between local and global food systems?
• Tour farm with farmers:
o Meet animals: discuss raising livestock, slaughtering, distribution and sales
on MV
o Tour community and student gardens and grain display: discuss soil and
vegetable production
• Activity: Explore and compare local and international food products

Lesson 3: Local and Global Food Systems
Guiding Question: How does globalization affect our food system?
• Reflect on farm institute experience
• Activity: Map local and global food systems
• Discuss: How do global food systems support us? How do local food systems
support us? How do global and local food systems affect food cultures?

FOLLOW UP & EXTENSIONS

Make recipes that come from different places around the world