unit - work - lesson #1 - chesnut and saunders-moultrie

LESSON #1From Field to Hair Follicle: You Are What You Eat

I. DEFINE OBJECTIVES AND CONTENTLESSON OBJECTIVE

Students will examine and track the journey food takes from farm source to retail store to their own point of consumption.

POINT TO PONDER

I have enough information about food sources to make wise choices for my own health and society’s future.

ESSENTIAL QUESTION

Where does my food really come from and what is really in it?

CONTENTOutline the content you will teach in this lesson.

I. Our Food SourcesA. Current food supply system: global, national, local

perspectives1. Location of fields where produce grown

a. Information found on sample labels b. Distance travelled from source

i. Foreign countries - grocery store fruit from South and Central America, Mexico

ii. Different US state - vegetables from California

iii. Local farms and farmers’ markets - availability

2. Processed foods a. Ingredient labelling examples

i. List items but not sourcesii. What else might we want to know?

b. Agricultural source vs. processing location ofingredients c. Approximately 70% of all processed foods contain at least one genetically modified organism B. You are what you eat: molecular perspective

1. Isotopic hair analysisa. Hair is continuous tape recorder of dietb. Corn found to be predominant source of

carbon in many Americans 2. Development of genetically engineered corn now prevalent in diet

a. Agricultural scientists introduced GM corn in mid-1990’s

b. Production of corn vastly increasedc. Uses beyond “corn on the cob” vegetable

i. By-products such as corn syrup, corn starch

ii. Feed for chickens, beef cattle

II. PRE-PLANNINGWhat will students UNDERSTAND as

Students will understand that while the process of eating seems simple, the food supply that we take for granted is the result of a

Who Puts Fruit in My Smoothies & Why Is There Corn in My Hair?Laura Chesnut and Brenda Saunders-Moultrie

a result of this lesson? How does this connect to the Essential Question?

complex global system of supply, production, and delivery. They will broaden their perspective of where their food really comes from.

What will students be able to DO as a result of this lesson?

Students will be able to consider a food product from the perspective of where its ingredients originated and how it arrived at their point of consumption.

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III. PLANNINGHOOKDescribe how you will grab students’ attention at the beginning of the lesson.BE CREATIVE.

TIME: 10 minutesWe will introduce the guiding quotation, “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” by Arthur Ashe, which will be prominently written on the board or a poster, and explain to students that our unit will apply this philosophy to increase their awareness and enhance their perspectives on food sources, GMO’s, and agricultural sustainability.Today’s hook will emphasize “Start where you are.” We will read How Did That Get to My Table: Orange Juice? by Pam Rosenberg while students sip an Orange Banana Yogurt Smoothie sample. This children’s book will serve as a basis for students to examine their current level of awareness of food sources. As a group, we will brainstorm what information the book did not provide. (It is intentional that the fruit in today’s smoothie had a long journey.)

INSTRUCTIONExplain Step-by-step what you will do in this lesson. Be explicit about ties to Points to Ponder, Essential Question, and Perspectives here. Include ALL support and teaching materials with your unit.

TIME:(5 minutes) Students will answer point to ponder question on individual ⅓-page copies.I have enough information about food sources to make wise choices for my own health and society’s future. Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10.Not informed 0 --- 1 --- 2 --- 3 --- 4 --- 5 --- 6 --- 7 --- 8 --- 9 --- 10 100% informedI would like to learn ...Teacher will say, “Now that you have a beginning perspective on where you are in your awareness of food sources, we will continue with what you have as resources to inform yourselves and heighten your awareness.”- (10 minutes) Students will use laptop computers to watch TED-Ed video entitled Food and You, http://ed.ted.com/on/7Y93o7Ig.- (15 minutes) After reading the brief article “The Fast Food Fruit,” http://nautil.us/issue/3/in-transit/the-fast-food-fruit, students will complete fruit tracking activity to answer the essential question, where does my food really come from? We will give each student produce labels from different countries. They will pin labels to a poster-sized world map and attach string from each label to a pin in Winterville, NC. They will use GoogleMaps to calculate the distance that fruit travelled from where it was grown to the local grocery store. They will attach a piece of paper with the distance to each string.- (10 minutes) Students will watch the first 6 minutes of King Corn DVD to learn how corn carbon is detected in human hair cells and why corn products and by-products are everywhere. We will have a

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short group discussion.- (10 minutes) We will summarize and review how we are “using what we have” to broaden our perspectives on where our food really comes from. Tomorrow, we will turn our perspective to foods containing genetically modified organisms, GMO’s. You will start planning to “do what you can” to raise others’ awareness in the form of a personal position statement.

ASSESSMENT(Performance Task) What will the students DO to demonstrate that they have mastered the content? Be specific and include actual assessment with unit materials.

TIME: 10 minutesStudents will register as TEDEd users and return to the lesson entitled Food and You, http://ed.ted.com/on/7Y93o7Ig, to answer questions.1. This video focusses our perspective on connections betweenAour foodBour healthCthe rest of the worldDnone of the aboveEall of the above2. We take our food supply for granted.ATrueBFalse3. The business of food is bigger and more specialized than ever because of all EXCEPTArising demandBgovernment support policiesCconservation initiativesDpopulation growthEnew technologies4. In the 1980's, the average supermarket stocked around ___ products; now it has ___ products.A2,350; 21,000B15,000; 50,000C8,000; 80,0005. Around 60% of food ingredients are purchased globally, providingAlower pricesBhealthier choicesCgreater selectionDA and CEall of the above6. Why do many people choose junk food instead of healthy food?AIt's convenient.BIt tastes good.CIt's less expensive.DA and BEall of the above7. The United States spends __ of every disposable dollar on food; India spends__; Nigeria spends __.A34 cents; 27 cents; 23 centsB40 cents; 70 cents; 10 centsC34 cents; 27 cents; 23 cents

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D10 cents; 40 cents; 70 cents8. Production and delivery of food uses vast amounts of all of these finite resources EXCEPTAfossil fuelsBtitaniumCwaterDland9. Worldwide. agriculture uses ___ of available fresh water.A12%B35%ChalfD70%10. In order to meet changing diets and growing populations, the amount of food will need to double in the next ___ .AcenturyB40 yearsCdecadeD5 years

11. Reconsider your perspective. I have enough information about food sources to make wise choices for my own health and society’s future.Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10.Not informed 0 --- 1 --- 2 --- 3 --- 4 --- 5 --- 6 --- 7 --- 8 --- 9 --- 10 100% informed

DOES THE ASSESSMENT ALLOW YOU TO DETERMINE WHETHER OR NOT THE STUDENTS HAVE MET YOUR STATED LESSON OBJECTIVE? YES OR NO

ASSESSMENT AND INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALSInsert ALL materials here including Assessments and Instructional Materials.Explicitly LIST any additional files for this lesson. Be sure that ALL materials have been submitted for this lesson.

Instructional Materials- Laptops with internet access- Trifold board with quotation: “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you

can.” by Arthur Ashe- Rosenberg, P. (2010). How Did That Get to My Table: Orange Juice? Ann Arbor:

Cherry Lake.- Blender, cups, and Orange Banana Yogurt Smoothie ingredients (1 large banana,

peeled, sliced, frozen; 1 cup chilled orange juice; 1/2 cup plain nonfat yogurt; 4 ice cubes; 1 tablespoon honey) We will use typical grocery store ingredients the first day and progress to local Winterville farm fruit and NC yogurt on Day 4.- Poster-sized world map- Produce labels collected by teachers from winter and spring grocery trips

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- Pushpins and string- Projector or Smartboard- King Corn DVD

- Copies of Point to Ponder self-rating, 3 per sheet

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Name: Date:


Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10.

Not informed 0 --- 1 --- 2 --- 3 --- 4 --- 5 --- 6 --- 7 --- 8 --- 9 --- 10 100% informed

I would like to learn ...

Name: Date:




I would like to learn ...

Name: Date:




I would like to learn …

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The Fast Food FruitThe banana’s journey from the plantation to you is one long science project.

BY GLORIA DAWSONILLUSTRATIONS BY JONATHON ROSENJULY 18, 2013 A truck is traveling on the freeway. Inside, stacks of bananas are piled high. Picked a few weeks ago at a plantation, they’ve traveled overseas in climate-controlled cargo ships, their color still green and unappetizing. But that won’t last for long. A colorless gas with a faint, sweet, and musky odor seeps from an open pouch placed inside the truck, quietly transforming the fruit en route. By the time the tropical fruit is in your grocery basket, they are a golden yellow.

This is not science fiction, but yet another attempt at perfecting the tropical fruit delivery process—a new ripening-on-the-go trick that Professor Bhesh Bhandari and his Ph.D. student Binh Ho at the University of Queensland, Australia, are now experimenting with. For the past two centuries, bananas have traveled the world by all modes of transportation. In the late 1800s, it was by railroads—tracks were built solely for banana transport. In the 1900s, bananas were trekked in refrigerated ships—gleaming white fleets with radio technology that allowed vessels to coordinate their arrival times with harvesting schedules. In his book, Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World, Dan Koeppel says that the banana industry “invented fast food in a way.” A banana may be healthier than a burger, but how it’s brought to you is not all that different. Before the fast-food industry learned to process, pack, and ship inexpensive temperature-controlled meals, banana carriers had already perfected their own shipping process. “If you look at the model of the industrialized supply chain, what they really came up with was a lot closer to what a fast-food chain does,” he says. The result “is bananas that arrive at the market on their final green day, and which will last exactly seven days before turning brown.”

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By the time bananas land on the supermarket shelf, their ripening process has already been carefully engineered through the use of three gases: ethylene, carbon dioxide, and oxygen. “To bring this tropical fruit to distant markets and have it be edible is kind of amazing,” says Randy Ploetz, a professor of plant pathology at the University of Florida. “It’s pretty much a science.”

It is indeed. The banana is “a climacteric fruit, which means that once the ripening process begins, you can’t stop it,” explains Ploetz. “So the idea is to harvest the fruits when they are mature but not ripening.” When banana bunches are cut off at harvest, they start to release ethylene, triggering a decrease of pectin and a breakdown of starch, which softens and sweetens the fruit. As part of that

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“senescence process,” Ploetz adds, bananas also release carbon dioxide. But high levels of carbon dioxide and ethylene would cause bananas to ripen too fast or to spoil before they arrive to consumers. Like many other climacteric fruits, bananas are sensitive to carbon dioxide— if carbon dioxide levels rise to more than 7 percent, the fruit will soften while still green and won’t taste good. So the transportation companies use a full-blown climate-control system for their capricious passengers. When bananas are loaded onto a ship, they are cooled off to 54 to 58 degrees Fahrenheit, depending on the length of the future voyage, and the levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide are maintained at 5 percent each, according to Carrier Transicold, a company that designs trucks and ships to transport bananas worldwide. Plus, humidity levels are kept between 90 and 95 percent, to keep the fruit moist.

A banana may be healthier than a burger, but how it’s brought to you is not all that different.

Before bananas board refrigerated ships bound for foreign ports, plantation workers place a tracking device that looks like a complex calculator into each crate to record the climate-control data vital for the fruits’ health. The device stays with the dainty travelers throughout the entire journey until they arrive at a store. Since the 1930s, bananas always had to make a stopover between the ship and the supermarket—namely at a ripening room, a massive warehouse where they are not only allowed to finally turn yellow, but are gassed with ethylene to quicken the process. Such rooms are expensive to maintain, and Bhandari and Ho are experimenting with ripening fruits en route. But gassing fruits inside moving trucks is problematic—ethylene is combustible and can’t safely be used in large volumes. So the scientists developed a way to store ethylene in a powder form.

The new invention encapsulates ethylene into modified cyclodextrin, a compound made up of sugar molecules bound together in a ring—essentially a form of starch. Cyclodextrin has cavities in its crystalline structure which can entrap the ethylene molecules. Cameron Turner, whose role at the university is to commercialize new technologies, likens the structure to an egg carton—a degradable shell that hosts molecules rather than eggs. When a bag or box of the powder is opened in a truck full of produce, the cyclodextrin’s crystalline structure breaks down because of the humidity in the air—and begins to slowly release ethylene over time.

The effort exerted in planning and transporting bananas can seem, well, bananas. But be honest—you wouldn’t give green or brown-spotted versions a second glance. You want the perfectly ripe stuff, and this is what Bhandar and Ho christened their invention. They plan to begin testing RipeStuff in a trial fleet of trucks with interested customers in 2014. For the time being, most bananas still have to make their final

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stopovers in ripening rooms. However, when RipeStuff is ready to be used commercially—the researchers estimate by 2015—this already fast fruit will arrive at your store even faster. Ploetz calls banana transport a science as it is. But with the decomposing cyclodextrin and the timed release of ethylene, your banana delivery will become even more of a science project than ever before.

Gloria Dawson is a journalist based in New York City, where she writes about science, food, and a smattering of other topics. Her writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, National Geographic online, Modern Farmer, and Quartz, among other publications.

Nautilus is a different kind of science magazine. We deliver big-picture science by reporting on a single monthly topic from multiple perspectives. Read a new chapter in the story every Thursday.

© 2015 Nautilus, All rights reserved

ISSUE 003

http://nautil.us/issue/3/in-transit/the-fast-food-fruit

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Assessment Materials- Laptops with internet access and TEDEd lesson entitled Food and You,

http://ed.ted.com/on/7Y93o7Ig

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unit - work - lesson #1 - chesnut and saunders-moultrie

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