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Materials to promote The FOOD Museum's visit to your community

PLANET POTATO

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Bring A Museum Field Trip to Your School or Community Venue

PLAY WITH YOUR FOOD!

The FOOD Museum is bringing three of its lively, interdisciplinary, multi-cultural programs, to communities across the country during the 2005-2006 school year.

Chocolate, Chiles, Corn and More: Foods of the Americas
Lunchtime Around the World
Planet Potato


As our calendar will fill up rapidly, please book these presentations today.
Click here to see if your city is on our tour.

The Programs

Suitable for students of all ages, these interactive 40 minute programs explore what we eat, where it comes from, how we grow, prepare and eat it, and how foods have transformed the way we all live.

Using museum artifacts, objects, toys and other props, Tom Hughes takes a look at how history and social studies have been influenced through food and how geography has determined what people eat. He engages students directly, inviting their active participation in the program. ( No matter what people eat, it all ends up in the same place, the digestive system or gut. At the close of each program, using a funny prop, Tom shows how what we eat really does matter.)

All programs mesh with and support National Education Standards in Social Studies, History and Geography. They are interdisciplinary, (selected math and science concepts are included,) multi-cultural and hands on, with an emphasis on cross curriculum global awareness. The programs enrich and bolster current school curricula.

Students will:
• Practice audience participation behavior, creative listening skills and higher order thinking skills.
• Participate in role-playing and impromptu performance.
• Learn or have reinforced vocabulary, facts and concepts.

Chocolate, Chiles, Corn and More: Foods of the Americas

Who can imagine Italian food without the tomato? Chinese food without hot chiles? Africa without cassava or corn? And Europe without potatoes?

Yet these foods only reached Europe, Asia and Africa a little over 500 years ago.

60% of what everyone in the world eats today came originally from the Americas.

Using museum artifacts, props, and toys, Tom involves the audience by asking questions, and inviting volunteers from the audience to assist. Students try to pick what foods are from the Americas, and what from Eurasia and Africa. They explore how food has changed the world and changed their own ways of eating. They see that “globalization” occurs right on their dinnerplate.

• What foods originated in the Americas?
• What foods did Europeans bring to the Americas?
• How did Native people, Hispanics, and others nurture and pass on the foods we all eat today?
• How did American foods influence cultures well beyond this hemisphere?

The most swift and dramatic movement of foods in the world began with Columbus and his desire to become rich by finding a shorter easier route to India, the home of black pepper. He sailed west.

• Why black pepper?
• Was the world flat or oval?
• Were Columbus and his team lost?
• What was the first ‘new’ food Columbus tasted? What did he find that reminded him of the pepper he sought?
• How did foods contribute to historical events such as the ecological transformation of the Caribbean, slavery, the Industrial Revolution?
• How did the introduction of new plants and animals radically change environments?
• What foods became high tech elements?
• What dishes are truly “American” today?
• What’s an example of a dish that is genuinely “global?

Lunchtime Around the World—One People, One World: Differing Tastes

• All of us need to eat lunch, to fuel ourselves for the rest of the day
• What we eat, and how and where we eat lunch differ
• Customs, culture, climate and income determine the foods we choose

Around the world, people eat unusual foods. Even if some foods mentioned in the program may seem “yucky” to us, we need to respect everyone and their food choices.
Americans have many choices of what to eat. Many in the rest of the world consider themselves lucky to have anything at all to eat.

Going around the world at lunchtime usually includes about 25 countries. Tom demonstrates lunchboxes and carrying devices typical of each geographic region and relates stories of the children who might be eating lunch from them. And, of course, what they are likely to be eating.

Here’s a selection:

Finland (open fire pit in snow)---- reindeer meat and cheese
Saudi Arabia (desert tent on big tray)---- mutton (sheep) stew on bed of bread
Greece (sailboat vacation)----- fish, vegetables, fruit, bread, cheese
Hawaii (luau big feast)--- roast pig, tropical vegetables and fruits
Mali, West Africa ( from cooking pot)--- rice or millet with chili peppers and fish paste
Kenya, East Africa (wood bowl or gourd)---Masai drink of cow blood and milk
Egypt (soup in tin bowl)--- beans, rice and onion soup
England (fast food in newspaper)--- fish and chips ( fries) with salt and vinegar

Planet Potato

We are all Potato Eaters here on Planet Potato! (Yum.) The most valuable underground treasure taken by the Spanish from the Americas was not gold, or silver, but the Spectacular Spud.

Using toys and museum artifacts, Pota-Tom shows audiences where the Tremendous Tuber has traveled, explores how and why people are just like the Proud Potato, and reveals how this versatile vegetable has changed the world. Potato tossing, juicing, and measuring included. Sorry, no tasting...!

---view items from the world's largest collections of artifacts about the potato
---experience fun demonstrations that reinforce math and science concepts
---never look a potato in the eyes the same way again

No matter what people eat, it all ends up in the same place—the digestive system.

(Tom wears an amusing prop that illustrates this universal truth.) At the close of every program, The FOOD Museum has one message—be go od to yourselves, enjoy your food, eat well and be well.