Academic Reading
How plants make food
AUnlike animals, green plants can make their own food through a process called photosynthesis. Using energy from sunlight captured by the green pigment chlorophyll, plants combine carbon dioxide from the air with water drawn up from the soil to produce a sugar called glucose.
BA by-product of this process is oxygen, which is released into the air. Because almost all the oxygen we breathe comes originally from photosynthesis, plants are essential not only as the base of nearly every food chain but also for the very air that animals depend on.