Children are told not to eat junk foods until after they finish their vegetables; however, often they are not told why. Learning the difference between nutritional foods and foods that have no nutritional value (or junk foods) can be an enlightening experience for many youngsters. Engage students in science projects that teach the difference in the amount and power of calories to help them make healthier choices.
Calories and Nutrients
Begin your project by examining the calorie. One calorie is the measurement of heat that is used to increase the temperature of a liter of water a single additional degree. Calories give us the energy to do all the things we need to do in a day. We get our calories from the foods we eat, but not every calorie is equal. We must also get our nutritional needs from our foods as well. Make a list of important nutrients the body needs and what it needs them for. Each food we eat gives us a percentage of daily nutrients.
Charting Calories
Your project will require a collection of foods and their labels. Begin with a cup of fresh strawberries and a cup of strawberry licorice. Calculate the amount of calories in each portion. Strawberries contain approximately 77 calories per cup. Licorice contains approximately 800 calories per cup. Select an activity that a student might engage in. A 90-pound student would expend approximately 42 calories watching television in an hour. Chart the amount of calories taken in by each snack, compared to the amount expended in the activity.
Charting Nutrients
Next, use the labels to determine the amount of vital nutrients each serving of snack will provide for the body. One cup of strawberries contains 19 percent of daily fiber, 152 percent of Vitamin C, 2 percent of Vitamin A, 9 percent of iron and 4 percent calcium. Chart the amount of a human's daily need this snack provides. Next, review the label for the strawberry licorice. Chart the nutrients in this snack. There is about 320 percent of our daily requirement of Vitamin A in the candy. The rest of the nutrients read 0 percent. Discuss the amount of wasted calories in each snack, the amount of nutrients in each snack and what your body will be lacking with only junk foods.
Truth In Junk-Food Verses Nutritional-Food Advertising
Have the students observe a half hour of children's television programming and note what commercials are shown. Construct a spreadsheet with areas to list the types of food that were advertised. Using the spreadsheets, evaluate those types of foods and what their nutritional and caloric values are. You can also ask the students to chart what kinds of activities are taking place in the commercial. For example, there may be a commercial advertising soda by showing children skateboarding or bike riding. Discuss with the students how the sugar and calories in soda don't necessarily promote an active lifestyle. Ask the students to come up with their own commercials for healthier foods. What claims could the advertisements make that really are true?
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