Food: Where Does It Come From
What did you eat at home today?
Find out what your friend ate today. Did you eat the same kind of food
yesterday and today ? We all eat different kinds of food at different times,
Isn’t it?
Food Variety-(Activity-1) Ask your friends in the
school about the items they would be eating during a day. See if you can also
get this information from friends staying in different states of India. There seems to be so much variety in the food
that we eat. What are these food items made of?
Think about rice cooked at home. We take
raw rice and boil it in water. Just two materials or ingredients are needed to
prepare a dish of boiled rice.
On
the other hand, some food items are made with many ingredients. To prepare
vegetable curry, we need different kinds of vegetables, salt, spices, oil and
so on.
(Activity-2) Choose
some of the items and try to find out what ingredients are used to prepare
these, by discussing with your friends and elders at home. Example- Roti/chapatti-
Atta, water, Dal- Pulses, water, salt, oil/ ghee, spices
Food Materials and
Sources- It may be easy for us to huese the sources of some
of the ingredients. Fruits and vegetables, for instance. Where do they come
from? Plants, of course! What are the sources of rice or wheat? You may have
seen paddy or wheat fields with rows and rows of plants, which give us these
grains.
And then, there are food items like
milk, eggs, meat, chicken, fish, prawns, beef, pork and such others, which come
from animals. Plants are the sources of food ingredients like grains, cereals,
vegetables and fruits, Animals provide us with milk, meat products and eggs,
Cows, goats and buffaloes are some common animals which give us milk. Milk and
milk products like butter, cream, cheese and curd are used all over the world.
Can you name some other\ animals which give us milk?
Plant parts and Animal
Producrs As Food- Plants are one source of our food. Which parts
of a plant are these?
We eat many leafy vegetables. We
eat fruits of some plants. Sometimes roots, sometimes stems and even flowers.
Have you ever eaten pumpkin flowers dipped in rice paste and fried? Some plants
have two or more edible parts.Seeds of mustard plants give us oil and the
leaves are used as a vegetable. Can you think of the different parts of a
banana plant that are used as food.
Take some dry seeds of moong or
chana. Put a small quantity of seeds in a container filled with water and leave
this aside for a day. Next day, drain the water completely and leave the seeds
in the vessel. Wrap them with a piece of wet cloth and set aside. The following
day, do you observe any changes in the seed? A small white structure any have
grown out of the seeds. If so, the seeds have sprouted. If not, wash the seeds
in water, drain the water and leave them aside for another day, covered with a
wet cloth. The next day, see if the seeds have sprouted.
After washing these sprouted seeds.
You can eat them. They can also be boiled. Add some spices and get a tasty
snack to eat. Do you know where honey comes from, or how it is produced? Have
you seen a beehive where so many bees keep buzzing about? Bees collect nectar
(sweet juices) from flowers, convert it into honey and store it in their hive.
Flowers and their nectar may be available only for a part of the year. So, bees
store this nectar for their use all through the year. When we find such a beehive, we collect the food stored by
the bees as honey.
What Do Animals Eat- Do
you have cattle or a pet that you take care of? A dog, eat, buffalo or a goat?
You will then surley be aware of the food, the animal eats What about other
animals? Have you ever observed what a squirrel, pigeon, lizard or a small
insect may be eating as their food.
Plant products in Group. 1. These
are called herbivores.
There are some animals which eat
other animals- carnivores.
Some animals which eat both plants
and animals – Omnivores
We know that there are many amongst
us, who do not get sufficient food. We need to find ways by which more food can
be grown in the country. That will not be enough; we will need to find ways to
ensure that this food is made easily available to each and every one of us.
