Understanding how our diet affects the climate

Stokes Wood Primary School, Friday, 01 March 2024
10 Explorer KS1, KS2, KS3

What you did

Children discussed different food groups and they learnt:
- Eating a lot of meat and dairy, can hurt the environment because cows and other animals produce greenhouses gases that make the air dirty.
- Foods that travel a long way to get to us use a lot of energy from trucks and planes. Eating foods grown closer to where we live can be better for the planet.
- Some foods are better for the Earth than others. Eating foods like fruits, vegetables, and grains can be better for the environment than eating lots of processed foods.
- Food waste is bad for the environment.

Children said they could help by:
- Eating less meat and dairy.
- Buying local produce
- Not wasting food
- Only eating what you need to eat

Activity description

It's often hard to know what changes we can make in our lives to reduce our impact on our planet. Especially for children, sometimes the problem seems so huge and remote that it's difficult to know how we can make a difference.

Understanding our own daily actions is often a useful place to start. This activity looks at how some of the food that we eat can have a big affect on the climate and our environment.