Educating Children (in school)- What do you wish would be taught about nutrition?

I would love them to be given set amount of money and then have to make healthy choices for food.  What can buy more- fast food or grocery store and making fast food - and for the money spent, how many food groups can you get?  For the cost of eating out for  family of four, you could make dinner at home, eat better, and save money.

I agree- I had already connected that to the food demo day. Whatever I cook will be designed to feed a family of 6, and then compare it to fast food for a family of six. It is such a myth that the value menus are cheaper than real food. 

Well, the importance of eating whole, natural foods.  But IMO, the fact that added sugar's in anything/everything that's been processed is a singular nutritional evil.  I would teach kids about what sugar does to the body, how to look for it, what to be suspicious of (almost anything that comes in a box).  Especially for kids, cereals, juices, sodas, and snacks are a big problem.  If we could just get a handle on this one thing, it would make SUCH a difference.

I agree. Sugar will be a main focus of the unit actually. It will tie into the advertising and health implications, and help to hammer home the importance of reading labels. I am not shy about sharing that my personal experience to help make it more real, and that then usually makes it trigger a million questions about what their experience is. If I could make a difference in just one area of their diet- it is the sugar levels hands down. Not that the other stuff isn't important, but sugar is absolutely insidious to health and that slow deterioration makes it easy to ignore until it is an enourmous issue. 

My daughter is 12, and in her health class they have been doing the following things.  Food diaries for a week, tracking calories of items they eat. 

I think this has been a great way to build awareness of what she is eating to her, she has never thought much about it before.  Its also opened opportunities to discuss healthy habits at home.

I like the idea of having a real discussion of the impacts of surgar!

Good luck, its a great and powerful topic.

I agree that journeling for a week or two is powerful. Unfortunately, I have a standing agreement with the grade level teachers that my class will not trigger homework. (I was formally a grade level teacher, and they are well aware that with my projects kids end up wanting to spend a lot of time on the various projects in general.) I really need to come up with a way for them to do this without it costing them a lot of time outside of class. Journeling just one day a week won't be enough to show a pattern. To be truly effective they would also have to weigh and measure... I just need to get clever to come up with a plan to make it work!

The one thing I do know is that kids really can understand what sugar can do to them. The idea that eating too much sugar could cause them to have to take shots every single day freaks them out and makes them stand up and listen. 

I did a lesson the other day comparing "healthy" chocolate milk to Coca Cola. My 8 and 9 year old students (except the 3 who already knew) were gob smacked to learn that the half pint of chocolate milk served in the school cafeteria contains more sugar than an equal serving by volume of Coca Cola. 

That lesson on chocolate milk and coca cola led them nicely into the "real" lesson, which was to go home and pick 10 package/canned/boxed items in their cupboards that they like to eat and see where sugar was on the list of ingredients and how many different kinds of sugar were in the items. They are bringing back their results on Thursday. Will be interesting to see what they learn and if it changes what they want to eat.

I will for sure use the chocolate milk/coke example. Even I didn't realize that! I might not have mentioned the shots, but if it is something that makes it real for them without scaring them I am willing to try it out. We have very gentle spirits in my neck of the words! I can't really do the homework thing, but maybe I can put out a table of choices in class and they can work it that way :)