What Do We Eat?: How Humans Find, Grow and Share Food

by Megan Clendenan, Meegan Lim (Illustrator)

Overview

Every day, no matter where we are or where we need to go, humans need food.

Imagine carrying meals with you as you parachute into a war zone. Or trying to stay well fed while building the pyramids. People have always found ways to work together to put a meal on the table. What Do We Eat? is a delicious celebration of human creativity and cooperation, wrapped up in bite-sized slices of history, with a look at what scientists and inventors are cooking for the future. We are gobbling up Earth’s resources, and food is not shared equally. But today there's a magic tree transforming the dry African plains, food “ambulances” on the move and cities that have declared access to food a human right. Hungry to find out more? Let’s roll up our sleeves and find out what’s for dinner.

The epub edition of this title is fully accessible.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781459836761
Publisher:	Orca Book Publishers
Publication date:	09/17/2024
Series:	Orca Timeline , #7
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	8.75(w) x 10.75(h) x 0.44(d)
Lexile:	1060L (what's this?)
Age Range:	9 - 12 Years

About the Author

Megan Clendenan enjoys learning about how people ate throughout history and hopes that the foods of the future will be more sustainable and just. She is the author of Cities: How Humans Live Together and the Green Earth Award winner Fresh Air, Clean Water: Our Right to a Healthy Environment. She is a co-author of Design Like Nature: Biomimicry for a Healthy Planet, part of the Orca Footprints series. Megan lives near Vancouver, British Columbia, with her family, where she likes growing vegetables in her backyard.

Meegan Lim is an illustrator and arts facilitator striving to nurture community growth and healing through visual arts. She holds a bachelor of design and illustration from OCAD University. Her work primarily focuses on the intersections of food and cultural identity, manifesting through detailed gouache illustrations, digital paintings and risograph zines. Her illustrations have been featured in Chatelaine, Eater, Broken Pencil Magazine and the book What We Talk About When We Talk About Dumplings. Meegan lives in Brampton, Ontario.

Editorial Reviews

Appealing and engaging…Reveals how the act of sharing food and eating together promotes well-being and a greater sense of cooperation and community…Useful information for students interested in environmental activism or in STEM topics.”

Booklist

08/01/2024

Gr 3–7—This cheerful, informative title explores how humans have learned to grow, cook, and consume the food we eat. With engaging text, colorful photos, and a design-heavy treatment, this short nonfiction book approaches this kid-friendly topic by focusing on the utility of food—why we need it for nourishment and how many of the food-related discoveries occurred out of necessity. Explorers hoping to avoid scurvy, astronauts flying in space, and people in wartime have given rise to creative ways to consume for survival. The book highlights some of these issues and how groups overcame them with a "Challenges" sidebar, indicating what obstacles they faced in that specific event, and a "Menu" sidebar listing the foods that helped them be successful. These topics often expand to explore even more food-related threads. Interwoven throughout are intriguing tidbits about the history of food like how nutritional science and the knowledge of vitamins' impact on the body developed over time. Sometimes the text meanders, but kids will be so fascinated, they won't mind. The climate crisis and the importance of addressing the growing scarcity of resources are consistently addressed, making this a very relevant work for young people. Additional images include photos, charming illustrations, pithy chapter headings, and dynamic design. Back matter includes tips on how kids can explore food and help in the climate crisis, further reading, a glossary, and an index. VERDICT A browsable nonfiction work on an intriguing subject with many curricular tie-ins.—Shelley M. Diaz

School Library Journal

2024-08-03
A plea to address food anxieties by wasting less, being more efficient with current resources, and exploring alternative sources.

Best thought of as a discussion starter, Clendenan’s survey is light on fine details but spotlights a great array of food-related topics. The author makes quick nods toward both cautionary and inspiring incidents, from the ill-supplied Robert Scott Antarctic expedition to how a marooned group of Polynesian youths got by on a deserted island for 15 months in 1965. More recently, Clendenan describes the way the Russian invasion prompted Ukrainian restaurant owners to provide free meals to refugees. She also details creative ways in which people have met technical challenges, such as the invention of packaged salads for the military or growing food in outer space. In an overview of the history of farming, the author points to agroforestry (planting trees and shrubs alongside crops) as a potentially sustainable agricultural practice while warning of the problems posed by monoculture crops. She forthrightly suggests that, along with food that’s now being thrown away for cosmetic or other poor reasons (“landfill salad”), more seaweed, insects, lab-grown meat, and 3D-printed foods will soon be on the general menu. The visuals—a mix of color photos and Lim’s illustrations—underscore the worldwide diversity of different kinds of foodstuffs as well as the humans who consume them.

A wide-angled review, but useful for raising awareness of a topic of great and growing concern. (glossary, resources, index)(Nonfiction. 10-13)

Kirkus Reviews