Key Ingredients: America by Food

Why do athletes load up on carbohydrates the evening before a competition? The lesson helps answer this question as it relates the type of food to the amount of energy it contains. After a discussion, scholars perform an experiment to...

What happens when a non-native species is introduced onto an island? Santa Cruz Island, part of the Channel Island chain located off the coast of southern California, provides the perfect laboratory for young environmental scientists to...

Many of the foods pilgrims ate include foods people still eat at American Thanksgiving celebrations today. The turkey, a domesticated animal native to the Americas, often finds itself the center of attention on this holiday. Today's corn...

How do you read a nutritional label? Help high schoolers practice reading nutritional labels on foods so they can calculate the calories in different types of foods. They will also examine the effects of fat on the body and the link to...

An excellent resource gets kids looking at agricultural production to better understand the careers needed in distributing foods from the farm to the consumer. Book, poster, web, and video links are included for teacher use. There is...

How are the reactions between American and European consumers different when it comes to genetically modified foods? Use the New York Times article "Consumers in Europe Resist Gene-Altered Foods" to inform your middle schoolers about the...

Students examine each level of the food pyramid and how many servings they should consume during the day. They study the important nutrients associated with each category of the food pyramid.

Here is a different approach: emerging epidemiologists first go home to interview family on the topic of infectious disease. Then they come to class and view a video and PowerPoint that explore how climate change may increase the...

Are some families down to their last generation? The final segment of a two-part climate change series investigates the vanishing Marshall Islands. Scholars divide into research teams to analyze three different individuals whose lives...

What educational opportunities were available to women during the colonial era in American history? How did the opportunities available to women differ from those for men? To answer this question, class members examine a series of...