How do plants make the food we eat?

Plants make food by using photosynthesis: their green leaves capture energy from the sun, pull water up through roots, and take in carbon dioxide from the air. Inside leaf cells, that energy helps rearrange the water and gas into glucose, a sugar the plant can use and store.

That stored sugar becomes the parts we recognize at dinner: sweet fruit, starchy roots, seeds, grains, and stems. A potato is a pantry under the dirt, an apple is a crisp sugar-and-water package, and every bite of bread began with a plant quietly building carbohydrates.