historic curriculum

New World foods (lists & resources)

American school lunches (resource material)

Consuming History: Investigating Food from Other Times and Places Around the World, New York Times, grades 6-12

Oklahoma Ag in the Classroom, multidisciplinary lesson plans for grades 4-6. Excellent resource!

Presidential food favorites

U.S. Dietary Recommendations

Where did our food originate?

Apples & More, University of Illinois Extension, grades 3-8

Blueberries have roots!, U.S. Highbush Council, grades K-6

Chocolate: The Exploratorium & The Field Museum, grades 3-8

Rice romp, U.S. Rice Producers, grades 4-7

Spices in Your Favorite Foods, grades 5-7

Origins of Agriculture, Indiana University, interactive high school lesson

Mesopotamia food & farming

Foodways of the Rio Grande, elementary students

Ancient Rome--Cena Bene, ancient Roman banquet, grades 6+

Medieval Europe--Medieval Feasts, grades 3-4, AskERIC lesson plan

1492, Columbian Exchange--Guiding Student Discussion, grades 9+

1500, Renaissance Europe--500 Year Old Food Makes Me Sick!, creative lessons from the book It's Disgusting and We Ate It, James Solheim, K-5

1600--Food: Balancing a Navajo Meal (includes recipes), K-4

1621--Investigating the Pilgrim's First Thanksgiving, Plimoth Plantation

1700s-1800s--Rice and Slavery, grades 9-12

1700s-1800s--Slavery and Sugar: Molasses to Rum to Slave, grades 9-12

1747--Why are British sailors called Limeys?

1750--When Rice Was King, South Carolina history lesson from the National Park Service

1760--Colonial Christmas at Williamsburg, curriculum for elementary and middle school

1770s--What's Cooking-A Colonial Recipe, New Jersey Historical Society, elementary grades

1776--Salt Junk and Ship's Biscuit, diet of the Royal Navy, elementary grades

1797--How did Johnny Appleseed help the pioneers move west?, Kindergarten

1846-1850--Great Irish Famine curriculum

1860s--Beef & watermelons, Nebraska frontier foods, middle school

1860--A Shanty Boy's Meal, lumber camp fare from the Michigan Historical Center, K-5

1872--Vermont's Historic Diners, feeding the new industrial nation, grades 9-12

1900s--Why were school dinners brought in?, UK

1915--Australians at Gallipoli ate hardtack & bully beef, includes recipe

1917--Food is ammunition-don't waste it, National Park Service, grades 6-12

1918--Sow the Seeds of Victory!, National Archives and Records Administration

1941--British civilian rations, Imperial War Museum

1942--Victory Gardens, home front survival lessons for middle & high school students

1943--The Rationing Challenge, interactive lesson from the BBC

1945--Menuette, a British card game...includes original rules

diversity lessons

Atlantic Migration of African Foods, grades 9-12

Breads from around the world, primary grades...more resources

Chinatown Food ways, Museum of Chinese in the Americas, grades 3-8

Chinese food: grade 3 & grade 6

Cuisine Art: Exploring Ethnic Culture Through Food, New York Times, grades 6-12

Cultures and Cuisine Research, middle school lesson plan

Food for the Ancestors, discovering foods of Mexico, PBS

Food for Thought, Indiana Historical Society, adaptable for all grades

Foods of the Desert Culture, Native American food in Nevada, grades K-5

Hey, Mom! What's for Breakfast?, food around the world for grades 3-5

International food court, National Geographic, grades 6-12

Japanese traditions, cookbook & tea ceremony, grades K-6

Kaffee- und Teegesellschaften & Advertisments from a German-American cookbook, 1894, German-American food traditions, German I-IV

Mexican, New Mexican & Tex Mex history & cuisine (resource material)

Key Ingredients: America by Food, Smithsonian Institution

A Meat By Any Other Name...Social Views Towards the Animals We Eat, NYT, grades 6-12

Vegetarian Lesson Plan, adaptable for all grades

Yam and Eggs, breakfast around the world, Oklahoma State Extension Service, grades 4-6

economics

Historic food prices, data and sources

Ben & Jerry's Flavor Graveyard, why some products are discontinued, grades 3-5

The Big Mac Index, lesson comparing foreign exchange rates, grades 9-12. Additional data here.

The Cost of Thanksgiving Dinner, using the Consumer Price Index, grades 9-12

Gross Domestic Pizza, determine the Gross Domestic Product of Pepperonia & Anchovia, grades 9-12

I'll Trade You a Bag of Chips, Two Cookies, and $60,000 for Your Tuna Fish Sandwich

Mad Cattlemen Sue Oprah over Price Decline, media and economics, grades 9-12

food ads & packaging

Art of Packaging Leftovers (resource material)

Food ads, Tony the Tiger, Aunt Jemima, etc.

Food packages, kid's favorite brands 1940-1970 (resource material)

Food Product Design (resource material)

Kellogg's Special K Ads, a lesson in body image, grades 9-12

Looking at Food Advertising, grades 1-8

Packaging Tricks, grades 1-8

You've Gotta Have a Gimmick: A Lesson in Junk Food Advertising, grades 5-7

food as art

Art & food

Edible sculpture

Jell-O paint

Play With Your Food /Joost Elfers (book)

food styling & advertising

Deconstructing food ads for snack and junk food that target children, grades 3-12

Don't Buy It, PBS Kids,

Food for Thought: Making Food Look Good, grades 5-8

Looks Good Enough to Eat!, food styling in advertisements, grades 5-8

food psychology and consumer satisfaction

Food & Brand Lab/Cornell University

Portion Distortion, supersizing your caloric intake, U.S.D.A.

Reading Between the Lines: The Psychology of Menu Design (resource material)

food science & technology

All about cans, intermediate lesson from the Can Manufacturing Institute

Cooking up an Explanation: Investigating the Science Behind Various Food, NYTimes, high school level

Cooking With Chemistry, grades 9-12 (butter, candy, dairy, potato chips!)

Dining on DNA: An Exploration into Food Biotechnology, high school level

Finding Science in Ice Cream, secondary experiment designed by the University of Guelph (Canada)

Food for Keeps, food preservation methods & make beef jerky, Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service, grades 4-6

Food is Elementary, experiential curriculum integrating academic dicipline with food, nutrition, culture and the arts

Food Science Experiments & Learning, resources & lesson plans, University of Pennsylvania

Gatorade, the chemistry of sports drinks, grades 9-12

Genetically Modified Foods, PBS, grades 9-12

Have it Your Way, Fast!: Technology Behind Fast-Food Restarants, NYTimes, grades 8-12

How food works, root beer, cotton candy, pop rocks & chocolate

How long can canned items last?, FDA (resource material)

Iron Science Teacher: hot dogs, candy, baking soda, marshmallow peeps & pumpkins

Nutrasweet & Olestra, chemistry lessons for grades 9-12

Physical chemistry of making fudge, high school+

Pop Secret Information, NYTimes, grades 6-12

Properties of acids, bases, and neutrals & pH values of foods, grades 7-12

Puffed Wheat, Minnesota Historical Society, grades 9-12 (More material)

School sciences and food, Institute of Food Science & Technology, grades 9-12

Science of cooking, Exploratorium

Sports nutrition and the Olympics, grades 7-12

Space food I & II, all grades

Sugar science, (background material), grades 7-12

language arts

History through the study of cookbooks, grades 7-8

Books for Cooks, British cookbooks through time, adaptable all grades

Literature & food

Alcott, Louisa May: Amy's pickled limes

Arabian Nights: "A Thousand and One Fritters: The Food of the Arabian Nights," essay by Charles Perry, Medieval Arab Cookery [Prospect Books:Devon] 2001 (p. 488-496)

Austen, Jane: I, II, III IV & V

• The Jane Austen Cookbook/Maggie Black & Dierdre La Faye
  
• Cooking With Jane Austen/Kirsten Olsen

Burns, Robert: The Supper and The Haggis

Chaucer, Geoffrey: Cookery techniques & recipes

Dinesen, Isak (Karen Blixen): Babette's Feast

Joyce, James: The Joyce of Cooking: Food & Drink from James Joyce's Dublin/Alison Armstrong

Melville, Herman: Chowder from Moby Dick

Pepys, Samuel: Dining with Samuel Pepys (skip to page 127), background material from the American Dietetic Association

Shakespeare, William: feasts & foods

Recommended reading: Novel Cuisine: Recipes from famous novels/Elaine Borish & The Literary Gourmet: Menus from Masterpieces/Linda Wolfe

world hunger

Feeding Minds, Fighting Hunger, Food and Agriculture Organization, lessons for all grades

World hunger, grades 9-12, Utah Education Network

Need to find pictures of a specific food?
If you need a couple of pictures to illustrate your report/lesson plan? Try these for starters:

WEB-BASED IMAGE LOCATORS & CLIPART
Google Images and Ditto.com are good places to find pictures of basic foods (milk, spaghetti, hamburgers, pizza). These sites return thumbnail images for your selection.You can also search food clip art by type of food.

COUNTRY-SPECIFIC FOODS

• The Global Gourmet (36 destinations)
  
• Country tourist bureaus & travel agency Web sites--often feature traditional dishes
• Country-specific cookbooks (many are illustrated)

• Viking foods
• Medieval food clipart
• Colonial Virginia
• Dutch foods, 17th century: Matters of Taste: Food and Drink in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art and Life, Donna R. Barnes & Peter G. Rose
• American foods, 17th-19th centuries: Living History Museums..search for your state/time period. Some of these have pictures.

HISTORY OF U.S. DIETARY RECOMMENDATIONS (resource material)

Wilbur Olin Atwater, U.S. Department of Agriculture, published our country's first food compostion tables in 1894. The first daily food guides published by the U.S.D.A. appeared in 1916. The initial recommendations consisted of five groupings: meat & milk, vegetables & fruits, cereals, fats & fat foods, and sugars & sugary foods.

The original U.S.D.A. recommendations have been overhauled five times: "12 Groups" [1933], "Basic Seven" [1942], "Basic Four" [1956] the "Food Guide Pyramid" [1992] and "Dietary Guidelines for Amerians" [2005]. New groupings and interim adjustments reflect advances in nutrition science.

HISTORIC RECOMMENDATIONS

• The Origin & history of U.S. Dietary guidelines (1894-present)
  ---topic overview, includes comparative chart of government recommendations through time
• Historic charts & pictures
  ---primary documents, in color; excellent for classroom displays and hand-outs
• Picture of the 1992 Food Guide Pyramid & serving recommendations

Current Dietary Guidelines for Americans [2005]

• New Dietary Guidelines for Americans
• FAQs for the new Food Guidance System

HOW DOES THIS AFFECT AMERICAN EATING PATTERNS?

• America's Changing Eating Patterns, Food Review, U.S. Dept. Of Agriculture
  ---overview of 20th century food issues and eating patterns
• America's Eating Habits: Changes and Consequences
  ---includes historic summary of historic dietary recommendations
• Diet and Health
  ---obesity in America
• What, why, when and how much we eat---consuming choices

Some of the "New World" food from South America were introduced to North America via Europe. Some of the most popular are: Tomatoes, white potatoes & chocolate.

Internet sources

• Centers of crop origins (map)
• Negected Crops: 1492 from a different perspective
• Columbian Exchange
• Seeds of Change Garden, Smithsonian Institution

Recommended reading
1. America's First Cuisines/Sophie D. Coe
2. Foods America Gave the World/A. Hyatt Verrill

The books referenced above also contain separate entries detailing the origins and history of each food on their lists. Your local public or school librarian will be happy to help you find copies.

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