Introduction People use math to work with food in all sorts of ways When your parents buy food they use math to figure out exactly how much it will cost You can use simple math to help your parents know how long the food in the refrigerator will keep fresh Simple math will also help you find out how much food you have eaten When your parents buy food they use math to find out how much the food will cost If these ears of corn are 50 cents each how much will five ears cost 4
On the other hand the math becomes very complex after you’ve eaten food When food enters your body it travels to the stomach to be digested or converted to energy Math can give you an idea of how much energy you can expect to get out of a particular food STEM in Action If you eat one slice of pizza and then have another slice how many slices of pizza have you eaten 1 1 2 Two slices of pizza And if there were eight slices of pizza to begin with how many slices are left 8 2 6 Six slices of pizza Stomach The stomach is where food is digested or broken down for use as fuel 5
Recipes Have you ever made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich How did you do it How would you explain to someone else how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich You would probably say something like 1 Get two slices of bread peanut butter and jelly 2 Spread some peanut butter on one slice of bread 3 Put the two pieces of bread together with the spreads and some jelly on the other slice of bread on the inside to make a sandwich 6
Recipes are very much like mathematical formulas That’s a recipe a set of instructions telling someone how to make something The bread peanut butter and jelly are all ingredients in the recipe The instructions or recipe for making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich are very simple Recipes can be simple or complex but they always follow the same pattern They give a set of ingredients and tell you what to do with them to create the finished product Fast Fact STEM What makes the peanut butter and jelly sandwich a simple recipe For one thing there are only three ingredients Also if you take a look at step 2 it says spread some peanut butter on one slice of bread and some jelly on the other slice of bread The amounts of peanut butter and jelly are not exact That is partly why it is such a simple recipe It’s up to you to decide how much you want to put on your sandwich 7
