This unique lesson was shared by Steve Watts and Sue Gottsch, from West High School, Sioux City Iowa. Sue teaches food science and other FCS classes. Sue says that the curriculum tends to get boring for the students so she has been trying to add some new labs each year. Their school system has coaches to help with ideas and technology etc. Steve is formerly a science teacher. Together, they decided to plan an interactive meal challenge.
Gluten sensitivities and gluten free preferences are on the rise in the US, but what exactly is gluten and why are people so effected by it? Below you will find some resources to teach about gluten and it’s role in food. You will also find links to several culinary labs that are gluten free. The only thing not being addressed in this post is how FACS teachers handle this with students who are gluten free in the classroom. If you have successful tips on how to handle gluten free in your classroom, please share them in the comment section below.
Panera Bread has taken a stand to raise the bar and become transparent in their new campaign to offer consumers the best nutritional quality possible. They even put their promise out there for the whole country to see in the form of a letter, ads and commercials. As I read the letter and watched the commercials, I was impressed with the measures they are taking and think it’s a great example of our consumer rights in action. That’s why I am using it as a realistic way to reinforce the consumer rights with my students, as well as include non-fiction reading and writing into my curriculum.
When my children were in elementary school they thought it was cool to take their lunches in a fun lunch box. Sometimes I would surprise them with a clever, creative food inside. The memory of this, plus knowing I wanted to teach my child development students about healthy foods choices for children triggered this lesson and project. I assign this as a take home project but this could easily be done in a foods lab or even as a creative competition!
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.
Critical thinking and problem solving skills are definitely needed for today’s teens to prepare for the real world and life The rest of the storyon their own or with their future families. What better way to prepare them than to provide them with a real life scenario that needs to be solved. In this activity students are introduced to a problem and must work together as a group to figure out and creatively write and present the “rest of the story”,as the late Paul Harvey would say on his radio broadcasts. The beauty of this activity is that you can create a scenario that needs solved using any crisis type topic. I used childhood obesity, but you can use other important topics such as bullying, eating disorders, teen pregnancy, financial debt, finding quality day care, divorce, dating violence, aging and more. So let the scenarios begin!
Calories in and calories out is a one day lesson that highlights and explains what calories are, where they come from, andHershey.Kiss how we manage our weight with them. After learning the basics of calories, students will research how many calories are in a serving of their favorite snack food, and do some math calculations in order to figure out approximately how much time they would need to spend walking and running to burn off the consumed amount. This is a stand alone lesson/activity or could be easily adapted for an interactive student notebook.
Would your students drink a glass of pure sugar? Probably not, but they have no trouble drinking sugary beverages by glass.of.sugarwhat seems like the gallon. Students are not always aware of the amount of sugar they are consuming or the health effects associated with too much sugar. In this lesson students will discover the difference between natural sugar and added sugar, the common aliases of sugar used on nutrition labels, and the health issues associated with consuming too much, while also investigating the amounts of sugar found in the common beverages they consume on a daily basis.
Teaching teenagers about nutrition and consumer skills can be difficult except when it involves pizza! Americans eat a frozen.pizzaton of pizza on a regular basis because it doesn’t require much time or effort and because it’s fairly easy on the wallet as well. However, do students really know which frozen pizza is the best as far as taste and money is concerned, what’s inside their favorite frozen pizza, how it’s made or even how to make a frozen pizza healthier? This lesson and all of its parts can be done in their entirety or can be selected in parts….it’s up to you and how much time you want to devote to this lesson and activities.
When I was a child you couldn’t pay me enough to eat an onion in any way, shape or form, and when I did have to work with them they always made me cry! As an adult, I’ve come to appreciate the value of the onion, not only for the flavor it adds to whatever I’m cooking or preparing, but also for the health benefits it provides. So bring on the onions to help add some sweetness and zip to your meals as well as your health!
