Lesson video

Hello, and welcome back to your design and technology lesson.

I'm Mrs. Mee, and I am your design and technology teacher.

Today, we are exploring cooking and nutrition.

And our main topic is celebrating culture and seasonality.

We have looked at lots of things previously to include where our food comes from.

We've looked at culture, we've looked at seasonality.

We've actually explored how to combine ingredients, including making soup and making pancakes.

And today, we're actually going to explore the food industry.

So I'm glad you've joined me today.

Follow me, we are going to look at what we're going to learn in today's lesson.

Okay, so in today's lesson, we're going to be exploring the food industry.

Let's remind ourselves of some of the rules.

So here are our rules of play, which you know by now because we're now on lesson seven.

So today, we're going to be exploring in the lesson, we're going to do an investigative and evaluative activity.

We're going to be exploring how our food is manufactured, how it is made.

We're going to be looking at something called sustainability, so we're going to be looking and exploring at how sustainable our food is.

And we're also going to look at a particular manufacturer that we've chosen in terms of its sustainability.

So we are going to be using a lot of key terminology in this lesson, so let's just go through the keywords that we're going to be using.

We're going to be looking at the word manufacture.

And this refers to the process of producing and making products and goods.

So we're going to be looking at how food is manufactured.

We're going to be looking at mass-produced products in particular.

So mass-produced refers to products being made on a large scale and quite cheaply using machines in factories.

And then we're going to be discussing food miles.

So when we look at food miles, this refers to how far the food has travelled to reach the end user.

And the word sustainable we're going to be looking at.

And this refers to the supply of food being able to be maintained or continued, which we will discuss in more detail.

And then we're going to be looking at the word sustainability.

So this refers to the supply of food being able to be maintained using methods that do not harm the environment.

So the materials that you're going to need in today's lesson, you're going to need a paper or a book, and a pencil.

So if you pause the video now, make sure you're ready to explore today's lesson where we're going to investigate and evaluate, and resume the video when you are ready.

Okay, so what we're going to look at first is we're going to look at how our food is manufactured.

So we're going to explore how our food is manufactured and how it actually ends up on our shelves.

But before we do, let's remind ourselves of what we've looked at previously.

So previously, we've looked at where our food comes from, how it's processed, and how it's packaged.

And we are going to look at today, how that's mass-produced in a factory.

So before we do, let's remind ourselves what we already know.

So these are the four options.

So one of those options is incorrect.

So where does our food come from? Can you remember back to that lesson? It was quite some time ago.

So is it grown? Do we just buy it? Is it bought? Is it reared? Or is it caught? So which one of those options is incorrect? Pause the video and just have a little think.

And see if you can get it and point to the screen.

Fabulous, so hopefully, you've got it correct.

It is in fact option two, because we don't just buy it.

Our food comes from three sources, it's either grown, reared, or it's caught.

So the next one to remind ourselves of is how our food is processed.

So looking at those four options, grown, reared, caught, and actually the products that are bought in a supermarket, how do we process those foods? So the first option, growing our food, if you remember back to that lesson, there's quite a number of procedures, isn't there? But how does that food end up on our plate? How does the food that we grow end up on our plate? Have a little think.

Yes, so obviously, we have to dig it from the ground.

We have to wash it, peel it, cut it.

So the food that is grown is cleaned and sliced, that's how it ends up on our plate.

So it's cleaned and sliced.

And option two, obviously, that's processed by opening the tin and heating it.

What about the food that is reared? That goes through quite a long-winded process, doesn't it? Have a little think, can you think back to those pictures that we used? Have a little think.

Okay, so yeah, the end process is that it might be roasted, but actually, that chicken needs to be bred, it needs to be fed, it needs to grow.

And once it's grown to a healthy weight, then it is obviously killed and processed in either a small environment or a large factory, where you have to obviously remove all of the parts that we can't eat, such as the feathers.

And then once you've got a fresh chicken, like the one in the picture, then we roast it.

What about option four? What about the foods that are caught? That's correct, obviously, there's a big process that goes on, isn't it? From catching it from the sea and actually, then getting it ready to cook.

But there are lots of ways in which you can process foods that are caught.

So one of the option is that it can be deep fried and we can actually have it on our plate with some chips.

But of course, you could do lots of other things to process your food as well, such as boiling it, frying it, steaming it.

So there are lots of options.

So we've looked at where our food comes from, we've reminded ourselves a little bit of how it's processed, but this is, you know, a big process that it goes through.

Let's have a look now at how it's packaged.

Now, food is packaged to do one thing and that is inform us.

Our food is packaged to inform us of the key facts.

So what does the package inform us of? Can you think of four things? That's right, it informs us of the name of the product and a description.

And you remember when we looked at our product, we had to come up with a name and we had to come up with a description that captivated our audience.

So it does need some form of a description about what's inside, and that might also include something else.

What else might it include? That's right, so it definitely include the ingredients.

So it has to include the ingredients, but by law, it has to identify what the allergens are.

Do you remember how the allergens are displayed? That's right, they are displayed in bold writing, so it's easy for a user to see where the allergens are in those key ingredients.

So nutritional information, that's right.

And if you remember, you designed a nutritional label for your food product.

And a nutritional label tells us how healthy or unhealthy that food product is.

So if there's too much fat or too much salt or too many saturates in our food, it will indicate it.

Do you remember how it indicated it? That's right, it used colours.

So if you remember, it had red, yellow, or green indicating whether that was a healthy food product or not.

Can you think of any other reasons that a package needs to inform us? We've got name and description, ingredients, including allergens, and nutritional information.

So I've got cooking and storage instructions, okay, so you might have had something similar.

So it needs to inform us how to prepare the food products safely and how to store it so it's safe for us to eat.

So once you've opened a food product, sometimes you can only store it for a few days, but it does depend on the food product.

So what we're going to look at now then, so all of those things that we've learnt previously are all well and good.

We know where it comes from, we know how it's processed, and we know what the job of the package is, but how does it actually end up on our shelf? Have you ever thought about that? So how do the food products that we buy and eat every single day actually end up on our shelves? Now, if you go into a supermarket, you'll see, there are lots and lots of food products.

So we're going to just explore how our food product would end up on a shelf, what process does it go through? So Mrs. Mee has done this through illustration, so I'm going to show you how a soup is mass-produced, and I'm going to use a series of illustrations.

So first of all, we know that our food is grown.

So we know that fresh food, for instance, is grown.

Okay, so in a factory where it's mass-produced, the company has to source those ingredients.

That's the first job, sourcing the ingredients.

And we'll talk about how important that is afterwards, but you need to think about where your ingredients come from.

Once the manufacturers source the ingredients, those ingredients get transported to the factory where they'll go through a process of being made.

So transport, so again, we're going to talk about these in a bit more detail later because they affect a lot of things.

So then it goes to the factory.

And inside that factory, those ingredients are sorted.

And once they are sorted, they are then processed.

So you know when we processed our vegetables for our soup, what did we do? Yes, we peeled and we cut, in a factory, the same process has happened, but if you think, there could be thousands upon thousands of carrots that need to be processed.

So machines are designed to do that.

So there are machines to wash them, there are machines to peel them, there are machines to cut them, and then there are machines to actually cook and combine those ingredients.

So a factory has been designed and set up to make those products on mass.

So once the soup has been made, it is then placed into a package.

So as you can see from this illustration, that's an illustration of a conveyor belt, so all of the soup is placed into individual cartons, could be a plastic carton, it could be a cardboard carton, and a machine actually will pour the right amount.

So these machines are really, really clever and all of those soup items then move along that conveyor belt.

And remember, they have to be packaged correctly.

They have to be sealed, have to have a label put on it, and then they're put in boxes.

So once all the soup is put in boxes, nice and snug so that they don't obviously break during transportation, they're then transported to the shops.

And that's how your soup product is manufactured on mass in a factory.

And that's how it ends up on your shelves.

Now, Mrs. Mee watches a programme every week and it is called "Inside The Factory", it's on BBC.

I'd highly recommend that you watch that because that is an excellent illustration of how a lot of our food products are made.

It's really, really fascinating.

You can watch all sorts of food products be made, from cherry Bakewells to Cornish pasties, so please, have a watch of that, and get your parents to find that programme.

So what I'd like you to do now is you're going to download the jumbled up pictures from your worksheet, and I would like you to put the pictures in the correct order.

So I'm going to pause the video and you're going to download and put these pictures into order.

So you can see there, I have jumbled them all up.

Okay, all jumbled up.

Can you put them into the correct order? So download it, you might want to cut the pictures out and stick them and put them in the correct order.

Okay, so I'll give you a moment to do that.

Fantastic, did you give it a go? So at the moment you can see, that's all a jumble.

All of the pictures are all in the wrong place.

So we've got the soup that's moving along the conveyor belt.

We've got the picture of the factory.

We've the soup being cooked.

We've got the ingredients being transported.

The soup being processed there.

It's all in a bit of a higgledy-piggledy mess, isn't it? So hopefully, you've now put them into the right order.

Just to remind ourselves of how the soup is actually manufactured in a factory.

So let's have a look at if you've got it correct, so let's just check that for you.

So here's your answer.

So you should have put the vegetables first because that's the first, remember we source the ingredients.

Then you should have transport.

Ingredients are transported and where are they transported to? That's right, they're transported to the factory.

And once they're in the factory, they get sorted out.

And then what happens to them? That's correct, a machine will help wash them, peel them, cook them.

And then what do we do with them? So once they're washed, peeled, and cut, what do we do with the ingredients then? That's right, we cook them.

So we put them in a big industrial machine to cook them all together.

And once you've cooked the ingredients, what do you need to do with the soup then? Correct, you need to then pop it into the package, and those packaging, hundreds and thousands of packaging all run along a conveyor belt and they have to be sealed and labelled.

And then what do we do? How does that then end up in the shop? That package, yeah, goes into another package, doesn't it? Yeah, so they go into large boxes, which then are transported to the shops.

So your final answer is transport.

So that is the process of how your soup ends up from, sorry, how your soup actually is mass-produced from the key ingredient that is grown to the end product that ends up on your shelf.

So hopefully, that's clarified it for you, but please do watch that programme that I mentioned, "Inside The Factory", it's absolutely awesome.

So have a little watch of that.

Okay, so now we're going to look at how sustainable our food is.

So we're going to explore how sustainable our food is, but let's remind ourselves of the word.

So sustainable, if you remember, refers to the supply of food being maintained or continued.

Whereas sustainability is about that supply being maintained, but using methods that do not harm our environment.

So we're going to explore that during this part of the lesson.

So we're going to explore it, and we're going to think about what we need to consider.

So when I say the word sustainable, what things do we need to consider when we're thinking of a food product? Have a little think.

That's right, we need to think about where it comes from.

We need to think about how our food is grown, that's really important, that can be harmful to the environment.

We need to think about how it's manufactured.

And then, of course, we need to think about how it gets to the end user.

So we're going to take a look at how sustainable our soup is.

So we're going to think about where the ingredients have come from.

We're going to be looking at the growing methods, so how have the ingredients been grown? How it's been manufactured, and we're going to think about how it's been packaged and transported.

Now remember, our soup is homemade, so for a lot of these key areas, we're quite sustainable, aren't we? We're not having an impact on the environment as such.

This method can continue to be maintained.

But what we're going to focus on is we're going to focus on the where.

So you are going to look at where your ingredients came from.

Now Mrs. Mee has had a go at doing this.

She's looked at where all of the ingredients have come from.

Now, they've all come from a local supermarket, but actually, each one of those ingredients had a separate destination.

So how did I find this out? That's right, I looked at the packaging.

And if you look at the packaging on a fresh ingredient, it tells you where it has come from, whether it's in the UK or another country, but it tells you the destination.

So what we're going to do is we're going to work out how far each of the ingredients has travelled.

And we're going to explore the food miles.

We're going to explore how many food miles your soup has travelled.

Now Mrs. Mee has started this as an example.

So we're going to look at where the ingredients have come from and we're going to look at how many food miles they have travelled.

Mrs. Mee's done that.

So look, my onion came from Norfolk.

Our potato came from Perth, which is in Scotland.

My celery came from Spain and my peas came from Bradford.

My carrots came from Norfolk as well, but how can I work out the food miles? How can I work out how far they've travelled? So yeah, Mrs. Mee put that destination into a map, a Google Map, and it tells me how far each ingredient travelled.

So shall I show you how I've done that? Do you want to have a look at one of your ingredients and find out where they've come from? So you might want to pause the video at this point, have a look at one of your key ingredients and find out where it actually came from.

Where was it grown? Okay, hopefully, you've had a chance to do that.

So shall we play the little guessing game? Shall we work out how many miles do you think that onion has travelled? So do you know where Norfolk is? If you're not sure, have a look at a map.

So let's look at the onion.

How far has the onion travelled? Ooh, let's see if you've got it right.

So the onion has travelled 186 miles, that's a lot of miles, could you travel that far? Quite far, isn't it? What about the potato? The potato came from Perth, which is in Scotland.

How many miles has that travelled? Could you work it out? The potato has travelled 342 miles.

What about the celery? Remember the celery came from Spain, so it's going to be more miles, isn't it? Could you guess it? So the celery has travelled 1,207 miles.

What about the peas? The peas came from Bradford.

Do you know where Bradford is? Have a look on the map if you're not sure.

Now, these are miles they've travelled to get to Mrs. Mee's house, the miles from your house might be different depending on where you live.

But the peas have travelled 115 miles to get to me at my house.

And what about the carrots then? That's right, the carrots have travelled the same distance as the onions.

And what you can then do is work it all out, so you can actually add all of those totals up and work out how many food miles your soup has travelled.

So can you work it out for me? Are you ready for the big total? So my soup has travelled 2,036 miles to get to my house.

That's incredible, isn't it? Now what we need to think about, is that sustainable? What could we do to make it more sustainable? What could I do? That's right, I could get my ingredients closer to home.

I could grow my own ingredients.

I could get them from a farm shop so that I know that they are grown locally.

And when you realise and know where your food comes from, obviously, you can make sure that it is the best food products.

So I would recommend that you buy your food so it is grown locally or you grow it yourself.

So what I'd like you to do then is explore to see where all your vegetables have been sourced and work out how many food miles your vegetables have travelled.

So pause the video, go off and find your ingredients, work out where they've come from, calculate how many miles they've travelled, and then add it all up.

And that will give you an interesting fact to share with people in your household.

So once you've done that, come back to me and we'll continue.

Wow, did you do it? Did you work out how many miles your soup had travelled? I wonder if your soup has travelled more than Mrs. Mee's, I'd love to know, love to find out.

So sustainability is actually a really, really big topic.

Okay, so we need to think about not only where it's coming from, we need to think about how the ingredients have been grown, and how this will make it more sustainable.

Home grown would be better versus mass-produced, wouldn't it? And then we also need to think about how it's manufactured.

So our soup is homemade, so this is more sustainable, isn't it, compared to being mass-produced? So it's a really sustainable way, so I can maintain that method of making that product and it's not harming the environment, is it? So if you made all of your own soups, rather than buying them, you would be more sustainable.

Again, the packaging and transport, because I've made it at home, I haven't had to package.

It's gone in a bowl that can be washed and cleaned and used again.

And all I need to think about is how it's stored.

So I just use clingfilm and actually that's not very sustainable, is it, using plastic clingfilm.

You can buy eco-friendly ways of wrapping, such as the bees wax, that's a really good way of covering your food.

But I've just needed to think about how it's stored.

So how can you make your soup more sustainable? What is the final answer? After you've explored the food miles, how can you make it more sustainable? Okay, so now we understand a little bit more about sustainable food products and sustainability, now we're going to look at sustainable food manufacturers.

So there are a number of food manufacturers that make food on mass that have carefully thought about how their food can be more sustainable.

So they carefully select the following things, so they think about where their ingredients come from.

They also think about how the ingredients are grown.

They think about how the product is made.

And they think about how the food is packaged.

So Mrs. Mee, after she explored lots of food products, there was one particular soup that sort of drew my attention, that made me sort of go, oh, that looks like a really good manufacturer of a particular soup brand.

So I thought I'd take a careful look.

So I took a look at the following manufacturer.

So I had a look at The Real Soup Company.

So I wanted to know how sustainable their soup was, so I actually did a little bit of research and actually phoned them up and asked them.

So I spoke to someone at the company to sort of try and get some information, but the information I got was limited.

So I only know so much.

But what I did was I looked at where their ingredients come from.

Now, their ingredients are sourced from reputable suppliers across Europe.

Their soup is manufactured in Wales, so all of their manufacturing is done in Wales.

And this recipe actually started off as a family recipe.

All of the packaging is made from materials that can be recycled, and their growing method is they source their ingredients ensuring they are fresh and full of nutrients.

So is their soup sustainable? Yes, it's manufactured in Wales, but I don't know how it's manufactured, and I'd need to know more information.

But what about the where, where do the ingredients come from? Europe, yeah, do you think they could be more sustainable? Yeah, I think so too.

They could have sourced their ingredients more locally to them because they do actually source from across Europe itself.

So some of their ingredients will travel quite a fair way, but actually, they are obviously sourcing their materials from across Europe so they can get the best ingredients and the best taste because actually their soup is absolutely ultimately delicious.

And did you know that their soup is free from any allergens? And that's why Mrs. Mee likes it.

So I've looked at where it's manufactured.

I've looked at the packaging and the packaging is really sustainable because all of their packaging, how have they made it sustainable? That's right, so all of their packaging can be recycled.

So that is my little case study of The Soup Company.

I would like you to think about and think about could you find an example of a product in your cupboards or fridge where the manufacturer's considered sustainability? So maybe that the materials can be recycled, maybe they've sourced their ingredients locally.

So this is a task that I'd like you to do and explore, really have a look round your cupboards, and see if you can explore and find products that have been made with sustainability in mind.

So they've been made to consider where the ingredients come from, how those ingredients can be maintained, how they've been manufactured.

And they've considered the environment, which we all need to do, don't we? We do need to consider the environment.

So have a little look in your cupboard to see if you can find anything.

If you can't, when you're next in the supermarket, explore the shelves.

So have a little look at some of the products on the shelves.

So pause the video, have a little go and have a little look in your food cupboards.

Come back to me when you've finished.

Brilliant, so did you find any food products? Fabulous, so hopefully, you've got lots of examples.

So you may have found a chocolate bar that's got a Fairtrade symbol on it.

Did you know that that means that the staff that manufactured that chocolate bar have been treated fairly? You've probably learnt about that at school.

So sustainability is a huge, huge, huge topic.

I'm hoping that you understand just a little bit about sustainability.

So we've looked at predominantly where our food comes from today and how many food miles your food has travelled.

So it's a question to ask, the next time you're in a restaurant, why don't you ask the waitress or the waiter, where have the ingredients come from? Hopefully, a really good restaurant would display where the ingredients have come from.

And hopefully, they using people that are local to them.

So we've explored a lot, we've learned an awful lot.

So let's just look at the keywords that we've looked at.

We've looked at the word manufacture, we know that that refers to the process of producing and making products and goods.

We've looked at mass-produced and we know that that refers to products being produced cheaply in large numbers, using machines in a factory.

And we've looked at the process of mass-producing soup, haven't we? And Mrs. Mee showed you all of those pictures.

We've discussed food miles, so we know that that refers to how far your food has travelled to reach the end user.

And we've also looked at the word sustainable and that refers to the supply of food being maintained or continued.

And then we've looked at the word sustainability and that refers to the supply of food being able to be maintained using methods that do not harm the environment.

So hopefully, you've learnt quite a lot in this lesson.

And hopefully, you'll think about that when you next make a decision on what you decide to eat.

Okay, so thank you for today's lesson.

If you've got anything that you'd like to share, maybe you've researched a product that's really, really sustainable, and you want to share it, please get an adult or carer in your household, to take a picture and share it with us at Twitter.

Otherwise, I'll look forward to hopefully seeing you next lesson where we'll explore more cooking and nutrition.

Thank you and goodbye.