A close family friend was recently diagnosed with some serious health problems and was encouraged to change his diet.  He came to me looking for some suggestions on how he could adapt some of the recipes he already liked and was using.  After researching, I realized there are a lot of healthy substitutions to be made with very common ingredients. This made me think that this knowledge could be useful for my students as well since it’s highly possible that they might need to use this information in the future for themselves or their own families.  Thus, the lesson was born!  If you can think of other foods to add to the ingredient project list please write them in the comment section below.

Set

• I’m a big fan of the “Eat This, Not That” books by David Zinczenko so I showed a couple of them to my students and explained that they were going to be doing something similar but with common ingredients. They were going to create a PPT version of the book but theirs was going to be titled “Use This, Not That–Healthy Substitutions”.

Materials

• Projector & Screen
• Eat This, Not That Books (optional)
• Laptops

• Randomly assign the ingredients and give students time to research the healthy substitutions as well as background nutrition/health information.
• Have students present their PPT’s  to the class and fill out the Healthy Substitution Chart which is found in the project attachment.
• Once all presentations have been given, students are to choose a favorite family recipe to revise, incorporating the healthier substitutions they just learned about.  Students are to show the before and after recipes and include any adjustments to the cooking/baking directions as well.  Students may also bring in a sample of their “healthier” product for the class to sample, but that is an optional component to the project.

Attachments

• Use This, Not That Healthy Substitutions PPT
• Use This Not That Project (PDF)

Resources

• Eat This, Not That