School Lunch & Nutrition

One of the gravest issues facing our nation's kids today is childhood obesity. What can teachers and our schools do about it? We can start with improving school lunches and teaching about nutrition in our classrooms. Arm students with the knowledge of how they can help themselves, and how they can make intelligent, informed choices about what they eat, inside the school and out.

Lunch and Nutrition School Lunch Choices Reading Warm-Up for Gr. 5 & 6 Are your students aware of the controversial issues in education? Keep them informed while improving their reading skills with the reading passage and comprehension questions on school lunch choices, in this printable warm-up. Explore Activity: What's for Lunch? Students color fruits, circle vegetables, and draw one of each to complete a lunch. Make a Healthy Lunch Students plan a lunch using foods from each group of the Food Guide Pyramid. Ideas for Healthy Lunches and Snacks Find tips and ideas for making healthy food choices when packing lunches and snacks. Easy Recipes for Yummy Lunches Print this worksheet that provides some quick and healthy lunch ideas that your children will love. Healthful Snacks List By creating a list of healthy snacks, students will eat better foods. Bob's Lunch Box A fun activity for students to learn about healthy food choices. Thought for Food: A Nutrition Lesson Learn about the science behind nutrition, and get the resources necessary to give your students an understanding of healthy eating. Katie Kazoo Classroom Crew: You Are What You Eat Are your students eating a healthy diet? In this lesson, kids learn how to maintain a balanced diet and use a food diary to help them keep a record of what they're eating. You Are What You Eat Find details about nutrition and healthy eating in this article. The Foods We Eat Students match 32 foods with the words "every day" or "once in a while." Science and Social Studies: Sit Down and Eat Students discuss junk food, healthy food, and the problem of obesity in America. Science, Technology and Society: Eating to Live Students discuss the Mediterranean diet and how it differs from the American. They then complete a worksheet that discusses ideas about health and diet. Nutrition and You This exercise will help students learn to make good choices about what to eat.

Literature Resources Activities for Food Rules! Explore teaching activities to be used with Food Rules! The Stuff You Munch, Its Crunch, Its Punch and Why You Sometimes Lose Your Lunch. Chew on This Teacher's Guide Engage your students' interest in their health and well-being with the interdisciplinary activities in this teacher's guide for Chew on This: Everything You Don't Want to Know About Fast Food. This guide includes lesson planning ideas and discussion questions about nutrition, the history of fast food, and the practices of fast-food corporations. Good Enough to Eat Activity Guide Keep children involved in learning about nutrition with these activities for Good Enough to Eat by Lizzy Rockwell. This guide includes activities about the Food Pyramid and reading food labels. This is a perfect resource for National Nutrition Month in March. The Omnivore's Dilemma Teacher's Guide Get a fresh perspective on what we eat with this teacher's guide to Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, a book that investigates culinary traditions and three modern food chains. This printable literature guide includes a summary and reading comprehension questions for each chapter. Twinkie, Deconstructed Teacher's Guide Explore the modern food industry, the history of food processing, and the role foods play in our culture with the discussion questions and writing prompts in this literature guide for Steve Ettlinger's Twinkie, Deconstructed. This printable also includes many projects about the chemistry of food and its production. Additional Resources Teachers aren't the only ones invested in the fight against childhood obesity. Esteemed British chef and television personality Jaime Oliver is know for his fight to improve school lunches; First Lady Michelle Obama advocates for healthy changes direct from the White House; and plenty of parents blog regularly on the subject, as do some brave students. Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution Let's Move!: "A comprehensive initiative, launched by the First Lady, dedicated to solving the problem of obesity within a generation" NeverSeconds Blog: "One primary school pupil's daily dose of school dinners"