Level: Grades 1 to 3
Overview
Studies have found that fast-food ads dominate children’s programming. In order to give children a perspective on the lure of snack-food advertisements, it’s important that they understand where snacks can fit into a healthy diet. Once they have an understanding of where snack food fits into their lives, they can begin to deconstruct the ads themselves.
Learning Outcomes
Students will demonstrate:
- an awareness of the types of foods needed to maintain a healthy body
- beginning awareness of the principles of balance and moderation in fitting snack foods into a healthy diet
- an appreciation of the importance of maintaining an active lifestyle
Preparation and Materials
For background material on the nutritional needs of young children, read:
Photocopy the student handout:
- My Daily Food Record (PDF)
- Draw a rainbow, like the one in My Daily Food Record, on the chalkboard.
- A possible lead-in to these lessons might be a book for children such as The Berenstein Bears and Too Much Junk Food.
Procedure
Guided Discussion
All foods can fit into healthy eating when the basic principles of balance and moderation are applied. Healthy eating incorporates foods from the four food groups every day. These include: breads, cereals, and whole grains; fruits and vegetables; meats and other proteins; and milk, yogurt and cheese.
People who have a balanced diet ensure that they eat foods from all the food groups and recognize their bodies’ signals regarding how much to eat. A good strategy in teaching children about balance and moderation is explaining that a healthy diet is much like a puzzle; each piece is an important part of the whole picture. So, just as there are puzzle pieces with different colours, shapes and sizes, there are foods with different amounts of fibre, vitamins, minerals, sugar, fat, salt and calories. That’s what balance and moderation are all about.
To make it easy to remember the foods we need, Health Canada organizes our food groups in a rainbow. We use Yellow for grain products, Green for fruits and vegetables, Blue for milk products and Red for meats and alternatives.
- Using the collected food flyers, have each child cut out three or four of his or her favourite foods.
- Afterward, ask each child to place his or her pictures into its proper food group on the blackboard rainbow. Place snack food to the side of the rainbow as “other” foods.
Discussion
Review the foods that have been placed on the rainbow and fill in any blanks that may help the children better understand these different types of foods. (For example, if there are no beans, peas or lentils in Meat and Alternatives, you may want to add a picture or two to help children understand their options.)
Discuss the fact that different people need different servings per day. Primary school-aged children need 5 servings of grain products, 5 servings of fruits and vegetables, 2-3 servings of milk products and 2 servings of meat or alternatives.
Discuss the snack food surrounding the rainbow. Ask the children:
- Where do these foods fit into the rainbow?
- Why isn’t there a food group for them?
- Why aren’t these foods as healthy as the foods on the rainbow?
- Can we eat these foods and still be healthy?
- How much snack food may we eat each day?
Activity
Distribute the Daily Food Record to students. Tell them that they will be monitoring their eating for one day to find out how well they fill their own food rainbows. Beginning with today’s breakfast, have children draw or write the foods they have eaten in the appropriate sections and then colour each section appropriately (yellow for grains, green for fruits and vegetables, blue for milk products, red for meat and alternatives and a colour of their choice for snack foods). Tell them to draw a special place for snack food outside the rainbow, perhaps in a cloud or sun.
The following day, review their findings and discuss ways that they may fill in any “gaps” in their rainbows.
Evaluation
