Bread, breakfast food, and popcorn
Do you know that you probably eat grass?
When we think of grass we usually think of green lawns. But there are
many kinds of grass. Wheat, oats, rye, barley, rice, and corn (which is
called maize in many parts of the world) are all grasses. These grasses
are called cereals. And their fruits, which we eat, are called grains.
Grains are one of the most important foods we get from plants. Without
grains we wouldn’t have bread, cookies, breakfast cereals, rice for chop
suey—or popcorn to munch on at the movies!
Sugar, syrup, and spices
Most sugar comes from different parts of two plants. Some sugar comes
from the long, white root of the sugarbeet plant. Some sugar comes from
the juicy stem of the sugar-cane plant, which is a kind of grass.
All syrup and honey come from plants. Maple syrup is the sap of the
sugar maple tree. Molasses is made from sugar-cane juice. Honey is made
by bees from the nectar of many kinds of flowers.
Nearly all the spices that make your tongue tingle come from plants,
too. Pepper is the dried, ground-up berries of a shrub. Cinnamon is the
bark of a tree. Mustard, which goes so well on a hot dog, is made from
the ground-up seeds of a small plant with yellow flowers. And most other
spices are the dried leaves, stems, flowers, or seeds of little plants
called herbs.
