Food Menu and Space To Grow It Tahoma Jr. High 8 th Grade Science Maple Valley, WA

You will need to design a healthy balanced daily food menu (the new Pyramid is better, but a lot harder to work with – just use the simple old one) Make it work for one person (in real life, you could always multiply later if more people are involved) Personal taste (likes/dislikes) or allergies are NOT an issue… SIMPLE SURVIVAL IS ! Why is this cartoon more serious than funny? Is it healthy to “pig out”?

Visual and simple does not have the very small “fats, oils and sweets” group as they are often already within the other five groups or are used in the cooking process The new simple FOOD PLATE

RULE 1: as a group, design a healthy, balanced daily food menu with a total of 2,000 Calories (±100 Calories) for ONE PERSON FOR ONE DAY A vegetarian diet is possible, but a bit trickier to get all the essential nutrients to make a healthy diet.

RULE 2: “balanced” diet means you need to have the proper amount of servings for each major food group FIX TYPO on HO: Dairy is 2-3 (not 3-4)

While choosing, consider what it would take to produce that food ( i.e. if you like chocolate, there’s a LOT that goes into making chocolate – it’s NOT easy! ) Bread sounds easy (and a common food item – but you’d have to find out how much wheat you need to grow to make a certain amount of bread. Same goes with animals… having “ham” on the menu is easy BUT… what are you going to feed the pig??

You are NOT A CHEF… YOU ARE A PIONEER FARMER DO NOT INCLUDE SPECIFIC COOKING RECIPES

RULE 3: you need ENOUGH SPACE to grow ALL the different foods on your menu for ONE YEAR

ONE CROP PER YEAR FOR PLANTS in real life, sometimes multiple growing seasons are available, but let’s keep this simple

Let’s say that you are going to have one apple per person per day. Since apples are only produced once a year, that means you need to grow at least 365 apples each year. Now you’ll need to research how many apples are produced by 1 average tree and then… how much space is needed to produce enough trees to make 365 apples. BTW: your plants and animals can be fully grown to start – just replace what’s used

How about having some chicken for dinner? What if you eat ½ a chicken each day? That will be at least 183 chickens needed per year BUT… they can reproduce during that year, so you can have less than 183 around. So… how long is it going to take to replace that chicken? Then… what is it going to take to grow that chicken? (food you need to grow to feed it – and other animals) RESEARCH GROWING CHICKENS being a Pioneer farmer sure isn’t easy – especially if your survival depends on it !

The most important part of all this is: HOW MANY CHICKENS ARE YOU GOING TO HAVE IN YOUR mini-FARM AT ANY ONE TIME? Well - if you eat ½ a chicken per day, and it takes a while to grow a replacement, you are going to need more than a couple of chickens around at different levels of growth so one is ready to eat tomorrow – and the day after – and the day after that... and they all need food and space… OBVIOUSLY – A LOT MORE THAN JUST THREE (“mom”, “dad” and growing babies)

Since chickens (females) lay eggs too, you may want to eat eggs AND chicken meat. Don’t worry about having too many chickens – you can always compost them/eggs if there’s too many (just don’t be short). RESEARCH: how fast hens lay eggs AND how long it takes to grow to adult to eat meat – then make sure you have enough of them and time to meet your needs… and don’t forget about ROOSTERS (males).

We have provided “REFERENCE” documents online to help you find what you need. It may not be ALL you need, but will at least get you started. look for “Unit 6 – Ecology” look for “REFERENCE”

example: carrots if you need ½ pound of carrots per day you’ll need 183 pounds of carrots each year (365 days per year x 0.5lb per day)

According to a SWIFT REFERENCE document, you can grow 14,400lbs of carrots per acre 1 acre ~ 40,000ft 2 (200ft x 200ft)

then space needed to grow that much carrots would be 183lbs / 14,400lbs per acre = acres to figure out “plot” size 40,000ft 2 x 0.013acres = 520ft 2 (or a plot 10’ x 52’) USE THE CHICKEN AND CARROT EXAMPLES AS “templates” TO HELP YOU FIGURE OUT THE OTHER FOODS.

So… the whole point of doing this exercise is to help you appreciate how convenient SAFEWAY and Costco are for you – and that you don’t think about ALL that goes into MAKING the food you easily can get in that nice, clean, easy to use package you buy. Not like the writer of this opinion sent to a newspaper… WORK AS A TEAM and WORK HARD !

GOOGLE SLIDES PRESENTATION as usual create a group google slides file share with all people in your group MAKE TEACHER THE OWNER example naming format for file: Pd1-8-JoeR,MaryS,TimW FIGURE ABOUT 10 SLIDES (2mins for other groups to look through): first slide: Proper Title Slide (TITLE, First Name Last Initial of each group member, Pd #, Teacher one each for: breakfast, lunch and dinner items (include portion sizes and Calories) then a few slides showing the TOTAL CALORIES and SPACE NEEDED calculations (spreadsheet or table best) USE PICTURES BUT CAREFULLY – INFO MORE IMPORTANT end show one name each slide lower right as usual