Food Waste and Mathematics: From Farm to Table to Dump

Here's a very uncomfortable fact: it takes 4 pounds of potatoes to make 1 pound of potato chips. That means that for every 1 pound bag of potato chips you eat, 3 pounds of potatoes have to be thrown away. What a waste of food!

This is a series of activities that looks at the hidden world of food waste. It includes a look at how much food is wasted as it is "processed" into finished products like french fries and potato chips. It also includes mathematical activities where students calculate how many pounds of food gets wasted from farm to storage to transport to distribution to store and then to home. There is also a list of video links for students to learn about how food is wasted as well as an article that looks at the difficulty of distributing excess food that is grown on farms.

You can pick and choose which activities you want to do: there is about 4 hours of different activities involving mathematics, reading and writing.

Bonus Activity; 5 Ways to STOP WASTING BREAD! Five different things your students can do at home to re-use stale bread in delicious ways.

Note: This would be an ideal activity to use with any kind of "harvest holiday," be it Sukkot or Thanksgiving, as it helps students learn about the significance of "abundance," and how our harvest can be made more efficient.