FoodSpan
This free, downloadable curriculum provides high school students with a deep understanding of critical food system issues, empowers them to make healthy and responsible food choices, and encourages them to become advocates for food system change.
The food system spans the activities, people, and resources involved in getting food from field to plate. Along the way, it intersects with aspects of public health, equity and the environment.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Too much dietary fat can be bad for our health. Chronic high lipid intake results in the accumulation of triglycerides in the liver, causing nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). One contributor to NAFLD is the inhibition of a process called autophagy, where the body’s cells clean up intracellular components that are damaged or no longer needed. Unfortunately, how autophagy inhibition results in NAFLD is unknown. A recent study aimed to determine what molecular pathways inhibit autophagy to cause NAFLD. Using yellow catfish as a model, they compared the effects of regular and high-lipid diets on autophagy and lipid metabolism. RNA sequencing showed that a high-fat diet altered the expression of many genes associated with lipid metabolism and autophagy. A pair of proteins, FXR and CREB, served as a switch to regulate these changes, maintaining a proper fatty acid balance and protecting cells from lipid-induced damage..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

Did you know that broccoli, cauliflower, and artichokes make a lovely bouquet of flowers? The students will examine the functions of flowers and determine that some flowers are edible, even tasty! This K-2nd grade lesson includes background information, vocabulary words, step-by-step procedures, links to other lessons about plants, and plant lifecycle illustrations. 

This course is for students who are interested in maintaining a healthy and happy lifestyle. This course will appeal to food and nutrition enthusiasts. The course is designed for students to understand the principles of food, nutrition, cooking skills, and how to understand finances. You will understand different topics such as healthy eating habits, food safety, cooking terms, balancing budgets, and other important things that will help you live your life on a daily basis.

Ever wonder how food gets from the farm to the table? The Bee Cause Project has partnered with SC Ag in the Classroom to create this unique roadmap from the farm to a local food hub and finally to the table of a local restaurant. The Educator’s Guide provides Resources, Recommended Reading List, Activities, Discussion Questions, and the full recipe for Basic Kitchen’s Collard Roll with Yuzu Dipping Sauce! The video, The Journey of Food: From the Farm to the Table can be found on The Bee Cause Project YouTube Channel. 

Students will be comparing different dishes of food and defending their opinion on which is more healthy. After that, the lab assistant will facilitate an open discussion (via prompted questions) about the Deaf community interacting in fast food businesses compared to hearing people's experiences.

Research and report on nutrition value of three favorite fast food meal items. Identifying healthier food options when eating out and how to make choices based on nutritional needs.

This collection of food science activities asks students to evaluate how fast food affects their lives.  Sections include Fast Food Dissection, Fast Food Caloric Count, Supersize Me video discussion, and a research paper activity. Written by Lee Weis of Ell-Saline High School, Brookville, KS in 2008.

Students will compare and contrast different types of feed milling. Students will demonstrate different types of feed milling by using cereal. 

Students will learn about fiber by looking at what fiber is, the different types, what it does for the body, sources of fiber, and diseases associated with an under-consumption. Lesson 1 of 5 addressing middle school nutrition.

Students explore the school outdoor space and/or school garden to make observations of different objects found there. They collect three objects and place them in a paper bag. Back in the classroom they give clues to their classmates based on the object’s properties so that classmates can guess the objects in the bag. Students then work in groups of four to sort all their objects based on different properties.

Students actively engage in physical activity while making observations about the effects that movement/exercise has on their body. Students then research the positive health impacts of exercise and why they should reduce screen time and build healthy sleep habits. Ultimately, students develop a plan for making healthier choices at home and at school.

Physical fitness and nutrition are important parts of everyday life. Fitness for Life will give you the opportunity to create personal fitness goals and make nutrition plans that are useful and fun. We will explore different ways to exercise and use your personal talents and ambitions to make physical activity a part of your daily routine. Bring a good attitude, be ready to participate, and get excited to advance your skills or try something new!

This course explores connections between what we eat and who we are through cross-cultural study of how personal and collective identities, social relations, and economic inequalities are formed and maintained via practices of food production, preparation, and consumption. Discussions are organized around critical discussion of what makes “good” food good (tasty, healthy, authentic, ethical, etc.), and draw on anthropological studies as well as recent writing and films on the politics of food and agriculture. A primary goal of the course is to provide students with conceptual tools to understand and evaluate food systems at local and global levels. Instruction and practice in written and oral communication is provided.

Groups will research their food group and create a visual display of their group and explain why they chose the foods they did for that group.

Food! is a freely available community research guide developed by the Smithsonian Science Education Center (SSEC) in partnership with the InterAcademy Partnership as part of the Smithsonian Science for Global Goals project. These Smithsonian Science for Global Goals community research guides use the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a framework to focus on sustainable actions that are defined and implemented by students.

Food! is a module broken up into seven parts. Each part contains a series of tasks to complete. Each task contains additional resources to support that task. We have provided a suggested order for the parts and tasks. However, the structure of the guide hopefully allows you to customize your learning experience by selecting which parts, tasks, and resources you would like to utilize and in what order you would like to complete them.

Activity "speed-dating" style with food. Students have 25 conversation promtps related to food and nutrition. Advanced-Low.

The Future of Food is an introductory-level science course that emphasizes the challenges facing food systems in the 21st century, and issues of sustainability for agriculture and other food production activities, as well as the challenges posed by food insecurity and modern diets to human health and well-being. Topics covered include introduction to the coupled-system perspective, historical development of food systems, socioeconomic aspects of the food system, interaction of the food system with the Earth's environment including soil, water, biota and climate, and the future of the food system considering potential changes such as in climate, urbanization, and demography.

Students analyze their own nutrition and then complete a project where they develop a research question, collect data in the field about students' nutrition, and analyze their data. Students use their research on nutritional requirements and student data to recommend changes in the school to improve student nutrition. Student teams identify and summarize their persuasive arguments with the data they have gathered. They present their findings to the appropriate audience with decision-making authority.

This unit plan was originally developed by the Intel® Teach program as an exemplary unit plan demonstrating some of the best attributes of teaching with technology.

This course will explore food in modern American history as a story of industrialization and globalization. Lectures, readings, and discussions will emphasize the historical dimensions of—and debates about—slave plantations and factory farm labor; industrial processing and technologies of food preservation; the political economy and ecology of global commodity chains; the vagaries of nutritional science; food restrictions and reform movements; food surpluses and famines; cooking traditions and innovations; the emergence of restaurants, supermarkets, fast food, and slow food. The core concern of the course will be to understand the increasingly pervasive influence of the American model of food production and consumption patterns.