Discovering the Food System Section 1: You and Your Food System Introduction

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This section contains instructional lessons designed to help you better understand how nutrition, diet and the food system are connected. This section introduces an overview of dietary guidelines and food guides, the food system components and concepts, and the effect and influence every day food choices have on the food system and vice versa. Lesson 1: Food and You introduces the dietary guidelines for Americans and how these support our health, yet have little relationship to the food system. The USDA Food Guide Pyramid is compared with the Northeast Regional Food Guide that is designed to promote healthful diets from foods grown and processed in the Northeast. This lesson explores the ways that dietary guidelines and food guides can impact upon the food system. Lesson 2: Food System Basics introduces the concept of a system and then the various components of the food system. Lesson 3: Think Globally, Eat Locally introduces a comparison between local and global food systems and the complexity involved in making such a comparison. There are no neat distinctions between the "local," or "community" and "global" when it comes to the food system. This lesson will explore what these terms mean and how they should be used in examining the food system. Lesson 4: Food Labels and the Food System teaches how to read the Nutrition Facts food labels, and helps to explore "food system" information that might also be included. What is on food labels and what is not can provide insights into why our food system is often mysterious and hard to know.