N is for Nutrition

Nutrition is important and I don’t think we talk to students enough about it. I see too many students who are overweight or just don’t eat right.

A fun activity would be to have students get in groups and pretend they are the parents who are making up a week’s menu for their family dinner. Using the New Food Pyramid, they need to figure out what they will eat and then find the menus for them. Each meal would need to have a calorie count including protein amount, carbohydrate amount, sugar amount, and sodium amount. Then they would total these amounts for the week. It would be fun to see who could come up with the most nutritious meals but with the least amount of calories, carbohydrates, sugar, and sodium.

I think it would be useful to cook some vegetables and have students taste them if they never had them before. Too many students say they hate vegetables but maybe they never tried them before.

Another activity would be to have older students do some research on nutrition. Have them find out if protein is important. What are the dangers of too much salt? Then they can share their findings with the class.

What activities would you do to teach nutrition? Please share.