World Food Day is an opportunity to discuss food, hunger, and related social issues in school.  Below are just a few activies that teachers have used in the classroom.  For many more ideas and resources, check-out the Feeding Minds, Fighting Hunger website.

Poverty forces people to make choices in countries where the annual income per person is $100 or less.  Ask the class to say how their family would live on $100/year per person.  What would you do without?  Why?  What would you eat?

Bring in 5 apples.  Discuss with class different ways of distributing them: divide them evenly, give them to the hungriest (how do we decide this), have a lottery, have an auction, save them until we really need them.

Ask children to make a food “shield” by drawing a big square or circle, dividing it with lines into sections and drawing pictures: of their favorite food, a celebration food, a food they like to prepare, a special ethnic/cultural food their families eat.  Have children share their shields, discuss individual and cultural differences, resourceful ways people use what they have.

Provide children with the following list and ask them what these things are used for: horse, eel guinea pig, beetle grubs, cactus, snake, seaweed, dandelions, fungus, ants, squirrel, camel, goat, termites, lily flowers.  Tell children where these are used for foods and discuss why they are used (availability, cultural acceptability, good taste, intelligent use of resources). Why don’t we all eat these things?

Have children bring to class or prepare in class different grain flatbreads: tortillas, chapattis, matzoh, pita, mooshu, crepes, blini (blintzes).  Discuss communality and different uses of these products.  Emphasize that grains, not meat, are the principle foods in most people’s diets around the world.