9781422287910

Chapter 1

Where Do Vegetables Come From?

E verything you eat comes from somewhere. Food doesn’t just magically appear on grocery store shelves or on your table at home. In fact, many people are involved in getting food on your plate. To really understand where food comes from, you’ll have to follow it all the way back to its starting point. Take vegetables, for example. You can follow vegetables from the farm to your plate, with several stops along the way. PLANTS AND DIRT All vegetables are plants. They grow in the ground and need water and sunlight to grow. Vegetables are actually different parts of the plant. Think about all the parts a plant has—roots, stems, leaves, f lowers, and fruits. We eat all those parts in the form of different vegetables!