Q: Why are plants so skinny?
A: Because they eat lite!

Explanation: Skinny means thin or lean; the opposite of skinny could be obese, fat, or chubby.  The stem of most plants is thinner than a finger, so yes plants are typically thin.

Someone who eats lite is someone who does not eat very much, or eats certain foods that are lower in calories.  You may have seen foods that are labeled lite or light.  Companies who sell those foods want people to think that those foods are more healthy, although sometimes, perhaps many times, they are not.

The word lite sounds the same as the word light.  In your middle school science class, you may have learned about photosynthesis.  Photosynthesis is the ability of plants to take sunlight and transform it into sugars that the plant can use as food.  So, if you think about it, plants are absorbing, eating, the light and making their own food.

This joke is funny because it plays with the word lite/light, and how it relates both to eating and photosynthesis.

Thinking back to when I was in middle school, there was a scary movie called Poltergeist where a child was told to run to the light (if you don’t like scary movies, please do not watch this movie clip).