We Are What We Eat!

Summary

This lesson is for older students. It helps them learn about food and health. Nutrients are the parts of food that help our bodies grow and stay strong. Too much or too little of some nutrients can make people sick.

Students will work in small groups. Each group will study a made-up person's meals. Some meals have too much of a nutrient. Some meals do not have enough. Students will also look at how kids across the country eat. Then each group will act out a short skit to share what they learned.

What Students Will Learn

• Which foods give us which nutrients.
• Why vitamin A, iron, calcium, and folic acid are important, and how they help our bodies.
• Why eating the right amount of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins matters. (These give our bodies energy, called calories.)
• What eating habits are common among kids in the United States and in their own state.

What You Need

1. Copies of a Pretest, worksheets, and a Post-test for each student.
2. Copies of the case studies — one for each group.
3. A scoring sheet for the skits — one for each group.
4. A board or big paper pad that everyone can see.
5. Computers with internet — one for each group.

How Long It Takes

About 4 hours total.

Steps

Getting Ready (Teacher)

Before the lesson, the teacher should:

• Check three websites: "Major Nutrients," "Dietary Supplements Fact Sheets," and "MyPyramid."
• Learn about the nutrients students will study.
• Prepare an introduction, a story called "Billy's Dilemma," and copies of all worksheets.

Step 1: Getting Started (30 minutes)

The teacher reads "Billy's Dilemma" out loud. It's a story about a boy who isn't feeling like himself. Students guess what might be wrong. The teacher writes their ideas on the board — food and health ideas at the top, other ideas at the bottom.

The class talks about how food affects health. Then students take a "Nutrition Pretest" — a quiz to see what they already know.

The teacher also asks:

• What can you learn by looking at what someone eats?
• Why does this matter?
• What could happen to Billy if he doesn't change his eating?

Step 2: Learning About Nutrients (30 minutes)

Students split into small groups. Each student gets a "Nutrient Worksheet." Using two websites — "Major Nutrients" and "Dietary Supplement Fact Sheets" — students learn:

• What each nutrient does for the body.
• What happens if you get too much or too little of it.

Step 3: Studying a Case (1 hour)

The teacher shows students how to use a website called "MyPyramid." This site helps check if a meal plan is healthy.

Each group gets one case study — a story about a made-up person's daily meals. Using MyPyramid, students figure out:

• How much of each nutrient the person is getting.
• How that compares to the amount they should get.

They find the percent difference (how much more or less than they need). Then the group talks about what this means and answers questions about it.

Step 4: Looking at Real Data (30 minutes)

Next, students fill out an "Epidemiology Worksheet." Epidemiology (say: EP-ih-dee-mee-OL-oh-jee) means studying how common something is among groups of people.

Each group studies one eating habit. They find out how common it is among young people in the whole country and in their own state, using a website called "YRBSS." They look at different years, genders, and grade levels.

The data on this site includes something called a "confidence interval." This is a number that shows how sure we can be that the data is correct. The teacher explains this so students understand it better.

Wrap-Up: Skits! (1 hour, 30 minutes)

Now each group creates a skit to share what they found. It could be a TV interview, a soap opera, or a commercial. Be creative!

Each skit should explain:

• The case study.
• Which nutrients were too high or too low.
• What that means for the person's health.
• What the real national data showed.

While each group performs, other students fill out summary worksheets about what they see. The teacher scores each skit using a rubric (a scoring guide).

After all the skits, the class talks about the eating trends they found. They brainstorm ways to fix habits that could hurt people's health.

Finally, students take the "Nutrition Post-test" to see what they learned.