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NCERT Solutions Curiosity Chapter 3 Activity 3.1: Let us record — What Do We Eat?

Book page 35 & 36 Updated on2026-09-05

Q1.
All of us eat food every day. Food is an essential component of our daily life. List the food items you have consumed over the week in Table 3.1.
Answer

Keep the table in your notebook and fill it every evening for seven days, not from memory at the end of the week. Write every meal — breakfast, lunch, snack and dinner — and also milk, tea, fruit and sweets.

Sample answer (a week in a home in central India — adapt it to what you actually ate):
DayFood items
MondayPoha with peanuts, milk; rice, arhar dal, bhindi sabzi, curd; banana; roti, aloo-matar
TuesdayParatha with curd; rice, rajma, salad; guava; khichdi, papad
WednesdayIdli with sambhar, milk; roti, palak sabzi, dal, buttermilk; roasted chana; rice, kadhi
ThursdayUpma, tea; rice, moong dal, lauki sabzi, curd; orange; roti, egg curry
FridayBread with butter, milk; bajra roti, sarson saag, jaggery; peanuts; rice, dal, tomato sabzi
SaturdayDosa with coconut chutney; rice, sambhar, beans poriyal; papaya; roti, chana masala
SundayPuri-sabzi, milk; rice, fish/paneer curry, salad; laddoo; roti, mixed vegetable
Tip: Add one extra column of your own — Where did it come from? Write “home-cooked”, “market” or “packet”. You will need this idea again in Activity 3.9 and in Section 3.6 on food miles.
Q2.
What observations can you make about your food from the data collected in Table 3.1? Do you eat the same kind of food in every meal or do your choices vary?
Answer

Read your table column-wise and look for a pattern, not just a list. From the sample table above:

  • One food repeats almost daily — a cereal. Rice or roti appeared in every single lunch and dinner. This is the main source of carbohydrates, our energy food.
  • The dal or a pulse also comes almost every day, but the pulse changes — arhar, rajma, moong, chana. This is the main source of protein.
  • The vegetable changes the most — bhindi, palak, lauki, beans, tomato. Vegetables bring vitamins, minerals and roughage, so changing them is a good habit.
  • Breakfast varies by region and by day — poha, idli, upma, paratha, dosa.
  • Fruit, curd and milk appear a few times, and sweets only on some days.

So the answer is: choices vary, but they vary around a fixed base. The base (cereal + dal + vegetable) stays the same; the details change from meal to meal.

Why this matters: if the same few items repeat in every meal, some nutrient is almost certainly missing. Variety is the simplest way of making sure that all the food components reach the body — which is exactly the idea of a balanced diet you will meet in Section 3.4.
Q3.
Compare your list with those prepared by your friends. Find similarities and differences in the food consumed by you and your friends. What did you find? Record your findings in your notebook.
Answer

Make a simple three-column note in your notebook: Common to all of us | Eaten by some | Eaten by only one friend.

SimilaritiesDifferences
Everyone eats a cereal (rice, wheat or a millet) at every main mealOne friend eats rice twice a day, another eats roti twice a day
Almost everyone eats some dal or pulseArhar dal at one home, sambhar at another, kadhi at a third
Everyone drinks milk, tea, buttermilk or water with mealsLassi and chhach in one home, filter coffee in another, black tea in a third
Vegetables and fruit appear in every listSome families eat egg, fish or meat; some are fully vegetarian
Everybody eats some snack or sweetTil laddoo, puran poli, pitha, gud-chana — the sweet depends on the region

What I found: the kind of food (a grain, a pulse, a vegetable, a drink) is the same in every list. Only the particular dish is different. So all of us eat the same food components, dressed up in different ways.

Why the differences appear: they come from the crops grown near each home, the family's traditions and taste, the season, and what is affordable and available — not from a difference in what the body needs. The body of every one of us needs exactly the same nutrients.
Q4.
Do you think that such diversity in food exists in all states of our country?
Answer

Yes — and the diversity is far greater between states than inside one classroom. India is an agricultural country with many soil types and climates, so every region grows different crops and has built its dishes on them.

RegionMain cropEveryday dish
Punjab and HaryanaWheat, maize, chickpeaMakki di roti with sarson da saag, lassi
RajasthanBajra, moth, gramBajra roti, dal-bati-churma, ker sangri
West Bengal and OdishaRice, fish from rivers and pondsBhaat with machher jhol, pakhala
Karnataka and Tamil NaduRice, ragi, coconut, uradRagi mudde, idli, dosa, sambhar, rasam
Manipur and the North-EastRice, bamboo, soya beanEromba, singju, kangsoi, black tea
Gujarat and MaharashtraJowar, bajra, groundnutThepla, khichdi-kadhi, jowar bhakri, pithla
Why this happens: food travels badly and crops grow only where the soil and climate suit them. Coconut grows along the wet coasts, so coastal cooking uses coconut oil and chutney; bajra survives with very little water, so it feeds the dry districts of Rajasthan. The dish is really the crop, cooked.
Did you know? The same grain gets a different name and a different shape in each state — ragi in Karnataka is mandua in Uttarakhand and nachni in Maharashtra, and it becomes mudde, roti or porridge depending on where you eat it.
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