Should we be eating insects?

Year 7 have got to this point in the year again...

Fed - Planet Chicken

This podcast is presented by Chris van Tulleken.

It is called 'Planet Chicken', and focusses on the meat we eat the most.... chicken.

Some useful content for our 'Food for Thought' unit in Year 7

"Our food is our history, politics, economics and culture... family, health, happiness - everything we care about depends on food..."

In the series - Radio 4 - he explores the reasons why there are 25 billion chickens alive right now... and we eat 74 billion of them a year. Chickens live only about 35 days if they are broilers...

Warning: a few rude words.

Food for free

I've asked my students, following several weeks exploring food production and sustainability to see what foods they can find for free, and consider that there are hundreds of millions of people who have to produce or find their own food.

Richard Mabey wrote a very useful book in this regard, and you can read a good chunk of it (also for free) here.

Foraging is also very much part of some cultures, and even a necessity for many who can not afford to purchase food at all.

Tens of millions of Africans rely on bushmeat.

This has caused issues in the past - the consumption of 'bush meat' being a factor in the outbreaks of Ebola in West Africa, such as the outbreak in 2014.

Sustainable foods of the future

More useful videos for the Year 7 Food for Thought topic.

Are insects the food of the future?

A good question.

Eat the meat

Plant based diets...

 

High Rise Pigs

This article in a recent Guardian newspaper describes the move towards intensive pig production in China which has resulted in a multi-storey pig farm.

This is partly driven by the huge demand for pork in China, which consumes almost half the world's pork, with a high per capita consuption.

This is just one of many food related stories that we are exploring at the moment. 

More to come over the next week or so when I share a few bits I've made.

Future Food - BBC resource

We have just come to the end of another round of presentations on feeding the world in the future.

The BBC's FUTURE page has a range of excellent stimulus for this theme, which fits with some of the ideas we have encouraged students to explore. Follow the Food has several short films and other information that would be excellent for students researching potential food solutions.