Food for Thought App Shows Kids How Their Dinner Effects the Planet Sarah McColl - TakePart
go to original June 5, 2016

Students from University Laboratory High School use the Food for Thought app on a 55-inch touch-screen computer to enter information from their food diaries and view data on how their dietary selections affect the environment. (Emma Mercier)

Presented with an image of a dinner plate and the ability to drag and drop food items to create their favorite meal, a group of eighth-grade boys had little trouble agreeing on what to eat.

“They had steak, bacon, and a burger as their meal,” said University of Illinois curriculum and instruction professor Emma Mercier. They skipped the potato and broccoli options. “Very typical of 14-year-old boys,” she said.

The students were experimenting with Mercier’s Food for Thought app, which dynamically charts the nutritional data and carbon footprint for each food item and the overall meal as a plate is assembled. The boys had cooked up quite the carbon load.

“The burger is actually the worst thing in the world,” Mercier said. Studies have shown red meat requires 28 times more land to produce than pork or chicken, needs 11 times more water, and results in five times more emissions. All in all, not a good choice in terms of climate.

The 14-year-olds aren’t the only ones devastated by the impact of their beloved red meat. “Burgers in America have always been one of our weaknesses,” said Mercier, who is from Ireland. “It’s been horrifying,” she said. “Hamburgers depress me hugely.”

The Food for Thought app takes those numbers and puts them in context with two goals: to make kids aware of the causes and impacts of climate change and to help them read and make sense of data in their decision-making process. Climate change is a strong element of the new science standards for students from kindergarten through 12th grade. But after days of curricula about climate change, how does a teacher bring concepts out of the textbook and get kids to understand that this affects their daily lives? Mercier says not to fight the tablet at the dinner table.

Read the rest at TakePart

Related: All-Beef, No Butcher: Meet the Scientists Behind Lab-Grown Burgers (TakePart)

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