Food, Culture & History Objectives

Information and activities from this academy will enable teachers/participants to do the following in their classroom:

1. Demonstrate how the diet of modern and historical people is determined by the interaction between social, economic, political, and technological forces and lead students in exploring these connections.

2. Lead students in examining their own diets and how their diet reflects the interplay of social, economic, political and technological forces in modern America.

3. Lead students in examining how their diets influence not only their personal health and lifestyle, but how individual diet choices can affect the wider society (economy, technological changes, political action, and public health).

4. Make real-world connections between the historical cultures and today as represented by the food consumed by the various socio-economic classes of each culture and guide students in making these connections.

5. Utilize primary sources from history and the 21st century in classroom instruction in order to improve both reading and writing skills.

6. Describe the basic social, economic, political, and technological forces that determined food consumption in historical societies and the 21st century.

7. Develop and implement units of study that focus instruction around a larger theme (food) so as to address Academic Expectations and Core Content in the areas of culture and society, economics, geography, history, practical living, and reading and writing skills.

8. Develop and implement culminating activities that incorporate content knowledge, critical reading, transactive writing, and technology (WebQuests).

9. Create an awareness of the risks of an unhealthy diet.
According to current research, obesity and the diseases associated with obesity (diabetes and heart disease) disproportionally are the problems of America's unemployed or disabled poor and working poor whites, Hispanics, and African-Americans. This "diet gap" is as significant and may be related to the socioeconomic achievement gap in Kentucky test scores.