🥖 Nourishing the Human Journey🥕🧂Exploring the Fundamental Need for Food 🍽️

Let’s take a look at the Fundamental Needs Chart again. On one side we find the physical needs: 🍞 nourishment, 🏠 shelter, 🚰 water, 🧥 clothing… and on the other, the spiritual ones: 🕊️ religion, 🎨 art and culture, ✨vanitas.

But today… let’s zoom in on something you can't live without. Something you need every single day. Something your tummy reminds you about every morning… and during the day, multiple times! Can you guess? That’s right—FOOD! 😋🍽️

🥕 But have you ever wondered… how do we know what to eat?

A long, long time ago, before farming, grocery stores, cookbooks full with recipes, our ancestors were explorers of the edible world. 🧭👃🌿 They didn’t always know what was safe or tasty. Imagine the courage of the first person who looked at a beehive and thought, “I wonder what’s inside there?” 🐝🍯 (Ouch! But yay for honey!)

Or the first person who picked a potato and said, “Let’s try eating this funny underground lump!” 🥔 Would you have dared? Now, let’s look at this chart—it’s full of clues! 🔍

🧂 In the center: minerals—water and salt. We need both to stay alive? Not just us—all animals do too. Without water and salt, our muscles wouldn’t move properly, our hearts couldn’t beat well, and our brains would feel dizzy and confused. 😵🧠💧 Elephants in Africa walk long distances along special paths to reach ancient salt caves hidden inside mountains. 🐘⛰️🧂Many animals can actually smell or taste salt in the air or in the ground—their senses are amazing! 🐐🦌

Mountain goats and deer lick salty rocks called mineral licks—these are places where the earth has extra salt and minerals inside. 🦌🧂 And cows? They love special salt blocks that farmers give them. They lick them like a lollipop made of minerals! 🍭🐄

So how do we get minerals? Do you lick a salty lollipop? We don’t just dig into a salt mine with a spoon! 😄 Salt is dug from underground mines or harvested from salty oceans straight from the grocery. 🌊⛏️ Remember the story of salt?

We also eat plants and animals that absorbed minerals from the soil through the roots. So in a way, the minerals travel through the plant until it reaches our bodies —from rock through the smart roots that seek minerals for the plant, to our tummy after we eat it, yum! 🌿🍲

🌾 On one side of the chart, you’ll find the plants. And guess what? Humans eat every part of a plant—roots, stems, leaves, flowers, fruits, seeds! Like nature’s own menu. 👨‍🍳🌱

—We drink tea from leaves 🍃
—We eat asparagus stems 🌿
—We munch on roots like carrots 🥕
—We enjoy fruits like apples and grapes 🍎🍇
—And yes—we enjoy even flowers like cauliflower and artichokes! 💐😲

🐓 On the other side: animals and their products. People have eaten animals for a long time, but they’ve also used their gifts without harm.

Milk which our ancestors have learned to transform into yogurt, cheese, and later even ice cream 🍦🐄Would you believe that archaeologists have found ancient cheese-making pots over 7,000 years old? 😲🧀 In ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, people were already making cheese—and writing recipes on clay tablets! 📜 They didn’t have fridges, so turning milk into something that could last longer and still taste good was another brilliant human discovery.
From where do you get eggs? 🐔🥚 Down in Peru by Lake Titicaca, people still hunt water‑birds, and sometimes they gather some of the eggs left by wild birds nesting in the tall reeds near the lake. 🪶 Always ensuring that there are still eggs and birds for future years.
What about the sweet, sticky honey, made by buzzy bees that dance to talk to each other and transform flower nectar into golden treasure? Long before sugar existed, honey was the world’s favorite sweet. People climbed trees, built smoky torches, and risked bee-stings just to taste a spoonful! In ancient times, honey wasn’t just food—it was medicine, magic, and even used as a gift for the gods. ✨🐝🍯

This chart shows how creative and observant humans are. We used our eyes, our hands, our tongues, and sometimes our mistakes (uh-oh!) to learn what is edible and what's not. 👵👩👧 And just like you might eat what your parents and grandparents gives you, and they learned from theirs, and theirs before them… knowledge about food has been passed down for generations, one recipe at a time. 📜🧠

🌎 Around the world, people ate what they could find and what the Earth gave them. But they also invented ways to turn food into something safer, tastier, or easier to keep, something that last so long that can stay in the cupboard months, just imagine! 🧀🍞🥒

🍽️ This chart is full of foods… but it doesn’t show everything humans eat! We are incredibly creative when it comes to food. Depending on where people live and what grows nearby, their meals can look very different.🐍 For example, look at the little snake and the locust over there! Yes, in some parts of the world, people eat snakes and crunchy fried insects like locusts and crickets. 🦗 Why? Because they’re easy to find in some places, and even considered a delicious snack!🐜 Some people eat roast ants, saying that they taste like popcorn! 🍿🐜 So remember, this chart gives us a peek… but not the whole plate! 🍽️✨

🔎 I wonder…What part of the plant are you eating at lunch today? What part of the plants you eat? You can make your own chart and draw just the things you eat , what animal products you eat, what parts of the plant, you can use the Food Fundamental Need chart as guideline. Or you can make a chart and draw top 10 unusual food people eat.

Second possible closing of the story leading to Fundamental Needs Chart Creations

👣 We’ve taken a deep, delicious journey down just one branch of the Fundamental Needs Chart—Food. 🥦🐄💧 From roots and stems, to eggs and honey, we saw how people across time and cultures met their need for food in wonderfully different ways. 🍽️🌍

🔍 But if we zoom out again… look at the Fundamental Need Chart! There’s so much more to explore! 🗺️✨🏠 What about shelter ? How did people build homes in the rainforest 🌴 or desert 🏜️ or snowy mountain tops 🏔️? What materials did they use? (Imagine building a house out of ice, or mud, or even bottles! 🧊🧱🍾) 🧥 Or you might like to explore clothing? Could you make clothes from plants? From tree bark or leaves ? Or from animals? Fish skin? 🌿🐟🌲 Or there are even other materials that humans have invented to make clothes from?

🚣‍♂️ Or transportation? 🚲🐪🚀 First, we can ask: How do people move themselves, and how do they move their things? 📦👣 By foot?🚶‍♂️ ( Human-powered) Walking, Running, by inventing bicycles, skis , sleds, rickshaws?🛷 🛺 Or By animals 🐘 Using horses, camels, donkeys, dogs, or even elephants. We can also add branches by transporting By Air, Water, Space...Imagine how many details the transportation chart of fundamental needs could have? A a chart just about the many ways humans travel! 🚂🎈

🎨✨ Today we expanded one branch… the food branch 🍏. But the tree is full of adventures waiting to be explored! 🌟 I wonder...what branch would YOU like to expand next?

🧠 Now is your turn to become a Fundamental Human Needs Chart Creator ✍️🗺️🔍📌 Start with one question: What do humans need… and how have they solved that need in different times and places?

With Montessori joy,
Vanina 😊