I think we have to ask whether people know what a grain actually is, first. I don't have a first hand knowledge of where rice comes from. I've seen pictures of rice paddies, and driven by them (more info in the pictures), and I learned about threshing wheat in school and seen films of it on TV. I have grown and picked corn. I do know that rice is called a grain or grass, like the others, so I can infer that grains of rice come from a similar position in the plant. As do the seeds in the tufted grasses that grow wild here. I know much more about the water impact of rice, however, and some about the concerns about arsenic, than about its journey from paddy to store. And I am both educated in general and interested in food--but a city dweller.

Yes, many in the more recent generations haven't a clue where their food comes from. Fish aren't square, chicken meat isn't really minced to sh*t and reshaped into dinosaurs, french fries come from potatoes in the ground, etc.

That said, I think it's a small percentage of people who would even be aware of the origins of many foods (potatoes aren't from Ireland), food culture around the world, and food history.

An acquaintance gives cooking classes to disadvantaged inner city children. When asked where carrots come from, the universal chorus from the children in one class was "From a can!"

The acquaintance was actually happy with that answer. Some children she taught had never seen a carrot before, had never tasted a fresh vegetable or fresh fruit.

She's seen more than one child with no teeth because their entire diet since they began eating solid food consisted of candy.

She's seen more than one child with no teeth because their entire diet since they began eating solid food consisted of candy.

*******

Mountain Dew Mouth (in Appalachia). So tragic to do this to a child.

It's not that they are disconnected from food, just stupid, uneducated and unable to make a connection between rice and grass and they didn't pay attention in school.
Or perhaps they were confusing rice with tapioca.

Part of the problem is that you were in Austin. A lot of rice is grown around Houston, but people in Austin are too snooty to visit Houston, even though Houston is a much friendlier city. I've lived in both cities four years each and much prefer Houston. I remember seeing huge white rice dryers in Houston when I lived there attending Rice University. A popular bumper sticker among Rice students was from the Rice Growers' Association, which said "Eat More Rice". If people from Austin drove to Houston, they would pass by many rice fields.

I honestly couldn't tell you how rice is grown or the part of the plant. I assume it's a seed like grain, but I'm not sure.

But your subject reminds me of a thread that I posted a couple of years ago....

"Reading a blog, and the recipe calls for bone-in breasts in a slow cooker. One commenter stated that to her knowledge, breasts don't have bones in. Legs and wings, yes, but never breasts."

Some people don't have a clue

Unless you are close to the "action", so to speak, would it be any different than not knowing how your homes windows are manufactured (although I did see the Pella Window Company toured by Norm Abram on an episode of "This Old House"), compared to how to grow/harvest/mill your own grain into flour, or anything else for that matter that you have never been directly exposed to in life? BTW - you can grow rice in your own yard in small plots in the ground, or even a bucket. Check out a copy of "Homegrown Whole Grains" - Grow, Harvest & Cook Wheat, Barley, Oats, Rice, Corn & More - by Sara Pitzer.

And even if you are connected to an agrarian society like I've been all my life here in Kansas (the Wheat State), there are still some surprises. I remember in the late 1950's when a farmer down the road from us grew the first field of soybeans in our area and the constant traffic going by that field looking at them. Now soybeans are common - but they are a cash crop, not a local food crop. I remember the first field of tobacco I drove past in northeastern Kansas and some cotton fields grown just north of town by a group of people who spin their own yarn, but I don't know a lot about either of them. And yes, there are even some rice fields in Kansas. A field of oats or barley, once common in the 1950's, are now very rare around here. If you see a field of oats, you can bet the farmer has horses but has never eaten his oats as cereal for breakfast.

I remember the first test fields of white wheat on a friend's farm 18-years ago, and he called me to come out to watch it being harvested. He gave me 50-pounds of it when he learned about my interest in it. I milled a portion into flour and gave it back to them. After growing wheat for over 50-years, that was the first time they had ever used any of their wheat for their table. His wife wasn't even sure how to use whole wheat flour, so I sent her some of my favorite recipes.

Ironically, most farmers can produce, but the larger percent couldn't feed themselves any more than the inner city kids can. They get their food from the same stores we do. Self-sufficiency mostly stopped, with some exceptions, back with the Depression/WWII generation. Even Amish and Mennonite farms are not as self-sufficient as they once were. Now my generation is removed even more (mostly hobby gardens and possibly some small farm animals) and our children and grandchildren know little to nothing about our former agrarian way of life - although my son is a throw-back when it comes to gardening, and he also raises chickens. They come to me for food information and I go to them for electronics information. The times they are a changing.... ;-)

There are government grant programs provided to teach children and adults where our food comes from, especially out here in the middle of farm/ranch country. The whole "Farm to Table" effort will show up as children churning butter or grinding corn into meal, and threshing wheat with antique farm equipment at your local museum. There are community gardens and even prison programs to get people back to the "earth" - funded by your tax money. We tour kids and adults alike through farms, mills, ranches, and even bread manufacturing plants.... Add to that, educational opportunities like the Extension Master Programs (Gardening, Master Food Preserver, and Master Food Volunteer) where you have to give back to your community a certain number of volunteer hours teaching what you've been taught.

-Grainlady

Grainlady, that's a good point about building materials. I do know how glass is made and how windows are manufactured, but I don't think that's common. As a child, way back when, we did churn butter at school (they had this truck that came around with cows in stalls, that showed how milking was done, and then in the class room we'd take turns with a crank churn in a big jar). We also did learn about threshing wheat, and I think we got to beat wheat sheaves, and we ground corn with a molcajete. At home, we grew corn, carrots, potatoes that I remember, and a few other things, not enough to supply the house, but because it was considered an important thing for the children to do. I'm glad they still have these programs! And it sounds like one of the better things our tax money can be spent on.

I don't know how adults can understand politics, if the children don't learn about how our society functions with food flowing from farms to people, waste flowing from houses to treatment and disposal areas, raw materials being reaped and transported to manufacture to distribution and consumption, etc. These things used to be part of the history/geography/social studies curriculum, as well as general discourse. Aren't they still?

I am ignorant of many things that make our world function. Asking questions and learning may expose my stupidity, but at least I then know.

Questions are a start, they lead to knowledge.

Grainlady, you said "Ironically, most farmers can produce, but the larger percent couldn't feed themselves any more than the inner city kids can. They get their food from the same stores we do.".

I used to watch The Pioneer Woman (your favourite show, LOL), and It always amazed me when she'd take a package of meat from the fridge that was obviously bought from the store. They have hundreds of cattle on the ranch, yet she buys her hamburger and steaks? I could never get my head around that.

Good point, Jasdip!

But my first reaction was, "The P.A. purchases the meat for the show!"

Many people haven't ,had the exposure to farms and dairies if they live in cities. They are NOT stupid, just not informed. I don't think that schools teach it anymore. Living in Chicago, we went to Lincoln Park Zoo that had the "Farm in the Zoo". Not everyone has this access. I met my first cow and even got a lick from him.

Inner city folks live in condos and apartments, with no room to grow flowers and vegetables. Some areas are food desert too. All they may have is a 7-11 type store.

I don't know how adults can understand politics, if the children don't learn about how our society functions with food flowing from farms to people, waste flowing from houses to treatment and disposal areas, raw materials being reaped and transported to manufacture to distribution and consumption, etc.

They don't understand. These are the people the Donald Trump refered to when he said he loved the un/under educated. And that is the problem, the lack of education. No one is born knowing that eggs come from chickens and milk comes from cows. Teach a child to grow a tomato and open a new world for them.

Thanks, everyone. Plllog, I see your point, but perhaps I should have made it clear that they had just watched a video about food networks that showed rice, wheat, sugar cane, and a couple of other crops being grown and harvested, and they were sitting in front of a wall with several drawings of rice, wheat, and corn on it.

Questions are a start, they lead to knowledge.

Very true, but if you only ask yourself it can become kind of a vicious circle when factual knowledge is needed.

Interesting about the windows. Perhaps because the best kinds of windows for S FL, where I grew up, are not regular single/double hung windows, when I was a child most windows were manufactured locally and you could see that happening any time you drove by a factory, since the walls were all glass jalousies because of no A/C. All gone now, of course. For at least 25 years all new homes have come with unsuitable northern style windows and large electric bills.

It's interesting what you are describing, Grainlady, because down here there's a big reaction to being un-self-sustaining, with a lot more urban farming, removing lawns for vegetable gardens, permaculture, and so on. Of course in "communities" this isn't allowed, but people are starting to agitate to change that, too. The urban chicken battle rages back and forth in many towns down here.

But there do seem to be more and more people who see that strip ag just isn't the best idea. I've always found it very odd that while our area is the largest producer of winter vegetables after California, there's never any local produce in the stores here and not much in the farmers markets, either. I think all that we produce goes to Canada and ours comes from California, which is crazy.

Inner city folks live in condos and apartments, with no room to grow flowers and vegetables. Some areas are food desert too. All they may have is a 7-11 type store.

Very true, but I don't think those kinds of folks would be able to spend $15 a head to take their kids to a museum. A family of five that can do that is unlikely to be especially disadvantaged.

That was kind of my point--that a middle class family that clearly puts at least some value on intellectual/cultural activities should be so utterly dislocated from where food originates. I would totally understand something like their seeing orzo and thinking it was some kind of grain or their mystification at a lot of the kitchen tools on display, but to look at grains of rice and think it's some way of processing a root vegetable is hard for me to wrap my head around. Perhaps they were misled by potato ricers, but I find that kind of hard to accept.

There is difference between stupidity and ignorance. "Ignorance can be cured, stupidity is to the bone."

If everyone were taught where food comes from there might be a big faction who would swear off meat, those who have compassion for critters would not eat fish or poultry too, those who don't want to dirty their clothes would never think of growing rice in a bucket, let alone in a dirty garden, and the cloistered (as in apartments and hi-rises) would panic at the very thought that their local store didn't have perfect vegetables and imported fruits year around, whatever the price. Many of us here on the forum would make do, plant some seeds, trade with neighbors, forage, raid the pantry, improvise. Do you really think that where the food comes from would make any difference to those whose sole daily meals consist of their local 4 corners of fast food? Apathy is rampant. They would not choose something else because they know where it comes from. They choose food that is close, cheap, and non-thinking about. I agree with grainlady: "Self sufficiency has stopped...with Depression/WWII." We are not built for self-sufficiency now, not taught, won't happen. We depend on "others" to make what we want/need to be available. I really don't want to go back to hoeing fields, planting seeds, churning butter, watering vegetable rows with buckets drawn from a hand dug well, swinging chickens, slicing venison steaks, gutting and scaling fish, trapping and skinning rabbits, and endless days of shucking corn and shelling beans. Yes, I know where the stuff comes from but I want it to be there without my help. Knowing where it comes from is immaterial to today. Sad truth. It won't change how we eat, or where we expect it to be available to us, just that it IS!!!

My point exactly....people living in "the projects" have an excuse not to know if rice is a grain or not....at least they do before they at least have the film strip in school about grains and harvesting.
But a family on vacation visiting a museum should have some idea about rice as a grain or a root crop. People are unbelievably stupid! Ever watch that bit on late nite TV called "Jay walking" where jay Leno took to the streets to ask the average person on the street stupid questions like, who won the Revolutionary war? Who is the vice president? What year did WW II end?....and the answers would make your head spin. I'll bet there are people out there who think beets grow on trees like apples.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJlY9C7YWzI

"Mountain Dew Mouth (in Appalachia). So tragic to do this to a child."

My teen daughter just watched a sugar documentary on netflix, and they talked about Mt. Dew mouth. She was telling me all about it. I had never heard of it. I started researching it, and it's a real thing :(

So then I just heard from a friend. She's on a prescribed diet. We've previously discussed gluten and fodmaps. She has an advanced degree--not stupid or learning challenged--and she bakes. She said she'd eaten a cracker that she thought was white (wheat) flour but then thought it might be whole wheat. I said she shouldn't have eaten it either way. She asked--I kid you not--"Why not white flour? Does it have gluten in it?"

Writersblock, consider me blown away! I didn't realize that the film they'd just watched had shown the rice harvest!

Yes, although to be fair they didn't exactly call it out as that, just showed people eating rice, then cut away to the paddies in flood, then in harvest. But the dots were pretty big, IMHO. I should have made that more clear in my original post.

What's even more interesting to me than that a baker wouldn't know about gluten is that a doctor/therapist wouldn't explain fodmaps and gluten when prescribing the diet.

I have a very good friend who is a dentist....Mountain Dew mouth is real....but more tragic is "meth mouth"....and there are those who try to pass off meth mouth as Mountain Dew mouth.

It is interesting the stuff people don't know sometimes, and what they have or have not been exposed to. My daughters class ate at one of those "medieval manors" where they are served a half roast chicken and no utensils. I think many kids didn't eat because they have never had to take meat off a bone and/or were grossed out by that. Met tons of folks who never made soup from turkey or rib bones...we are connected to what we are doing to the earth to produce all this food, whether we like it or not. Having basic understanding of where the food comes from is good information. Maybe some tv channel ought to start re runs of the victory garden! ;-)

WB: Thankfully the zoo is free as it is part of the county and the museums have a free day each week, Wednesday I believe.

Thanks, pkramer. This was a Friday afternoon.

HB I would love to have Victory Garden reruns!

To be fair to the doctor, I really think it was my friend, plus, potentially a language issue since she lives abroad. She was given lists. I'm sure wheat was on the bad list, but perhaps they have a different word for white flour so she thought it only meant whole wheat, or even wheatberries rather than flour. Since I had also said, "No wheat, rye or barley," I have to think the doctor did too and my friend is just being dense. Considering that she's Jewish (vigorously defend against gluten once per year) and that she bakes, and must have a sense of stretchy and rising, I just find it odd. I don't love her any less, but I was gobsmacked!

"Teach a child to grow a tomato and open a new world for them." (pkramer)

Well, as someone who grew up on a farm and is currently a gardener, it's important to me that children learn about food growing and gardening. I had a very intelligent five year old (city girl) sow radishes and tomatoes and check up on their growth. She was mildly interested at first, then just got bored with the whole thing. I didn't open up a whole new world for her. I've taken her to the theater and that did open up a whole new world. To each his own.

I think in the past people knew more about food because their survival depended on it literally speaking. Nowadays you needn't know the first thing about growing food in order to survive. People aren't necessarily stupid. They're just not interested.

LOL Laceyvail!

That reminded me of this Archie Bunker episode. Just watch the first 60 seconds. It's right there:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCW_3z-jWj8

Re the lindac reference to the Jay Leno Late Night show with the apparently stupid people. The first point is that we have no idea how many people were actually spoken with to find these perhaps few examples of ignorance. The second point following on plllog's point that most of us have large gaps in knowledge, is that with the passage of time, common knowledge changes with the needs of the day.

In spite of my advanced age, I had to Google rice to see an adult plant. I had seen the Film Strips (boy are we old lindac) on rice growing, but all I recall is the planting in the flooded fields. Yes I assumed rice was a grain, but I never knew what ripe plants looked like. I lived most of my life in California where tons of rice are grown and never saw any of it. Speaking of stupid people, who is dumb enough to grow rice in a desert!?

And back to common knowledge: WWII was wrapped up but essentially current knowledge at my birth; it is ancient history to a 10 year old. I do think that people should be able to have a general flow of history and realize that the US Civil War is nearly a century preceeding WWII. However, I can't seem to keep centuries and concurrent events clear either when they recede more than 200 years. On the current end of history, and being older, I have no idea why any of the Jenners are famous, and usually don't even know the names of current actors and certainly couldn't connect them with their film/TV offerings. I expect this common knowledge lack makes me seem stupid.

One more thing: its not really surprising that people on a Cooking forum (with that common experience) would be especially surprised at other's lack of experience; all the more so when that forum was on a site named GardenWeb.

I don't necessarily think of it as a lack of connection to food, but more of a lack of desire to learn new things. Many people are simply not curious by nature, especially if there is nothing in it for them to learn something new. IMO, this applies to all unknown things.

The dumbing down of America....

I think many are that disconnected. There are only so many hours in the day and so much energy available to each person and they have to make a choice on what is important to them. Because I garden, I understand a lot about fruits and vegetables. I understand enough about grain to think right now it is not worth it to me to mess with growing them. I know considerably less about animal husbandry even though I eat meat. Right now I just cannot devote the time and effort to it.

Interesting comment, tishtosh, especially considering the film was about how every food decision we make has wide-reaching consequences for the world, whether we choose to know about or not. A lot of the film was devoted to the incredible networks of food transport that most folks never see or know about, for example.

I'm becoming more and more convinced that there are a group of people who never learn anything that doesn't come via an app. It's self-imposed ignorance. Ignorance is bliss and they're orgasmic.

People have different priorities. Many don't care. Many don't want to know. Many are misinformed. And what I find most said is most of those groups are extremely gullible.