The World in a Cake

by Jackie Kirk and Mary Gale Smith

Grade levels: K-7

Subject areas: social studies, health, family studies, math, science

Key concepts: food interconnections, food production

Skills: mapping, food preparation, measuring

Location: classroom

Time: 2 hours

Materials: class copies of a world map (or one large world map for display); cake ingredients; pictures of ingredients, their production, and their processing; cake-making equipment (measuring spoons and cups, mixing bowl, wooden spoon, grater, rubber spatula, 9-by-13-inch rectangular cake pan or muffin pans and paper liners)

By the time you have eaten breakfast in the morning, you have already depended on
half the world.

— Martin Luther King

Food is a basic human need. Yet many of us, and especially young children, are distanced from the sources of what we eat. Most of us buy our food rather than grow it ourselves, and in families where food is bought packaged and pre-prepared, children have few opportunities to help in the kitchen or even to see the process of food preparation. When meals are presented ready to eat, little thought may be given to where the ingredients came from, who grew them, how they were processed, or what impact our choice of food has on our health and the health of the planet.