On BBC Springwatch this week they explained the importance of plankton in feeding the world. Well not quite, they said that without plankton we wouldn't be able eat fish and chips.
This got me thinking - the sign of a good programme - and I wondered to what extent did understanding food chains appear in the national curriculum. So I looked it up.
The answer is not much. There's reference in the Science Curriculum to constructing 'simple food chains' and there are further references to understanding where mammals get their food from but it doesn't appear to go far enough (although I'm sure individual teachers do).
Springwatch hit the nail on the head, plankton is the start of a food chain that ends on our plate. Failure to look after the whole food chain has potentially dire consequences for us humans.
Understanding the food change is not just about understanding the building blocks of our own survival, it is also vital if we are to tackle issues such as climate change and biodiversity loss.
We all understand food, we can relate to it. Let's exploit our relationship with food to explain and put into context some of the environmental issues that we're struggling to communicate.
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