Flu and cold season is upon us again and if you are anything
like me, a day of 30 coughing kids can make you want to go home and dive into a
bath of hand sanitizer. Helping students understand what germs are and how they
spread is essential for the health of you and your students this winter. A class full of germ-conscious kids who
properly wash their hands regularly would be great, right? Joann and I featured germ-related activities
in our posts about germs last year. Be
sure to check them out on our blog archive here
and here.
On a similar note, Halloween traditions can bring up a whole
new set of healthy eating teachable moments for your classroom. As the kids are slowly coming out of the
sugar rush of Halloween and building up to the feeding frenzy (more commonly known
as Thanksgiving) in America, teachers have a chance to set a good example and
teach kids more about the food they are putting into their bodies every day. I know that I had more than my fair share of
added sugar on Halloween, and as I was enjoying it, I started thinking about
the added sugar in my diet. There are
lots of nutrition related activities you can implement into your class, but
this week I thought sugar would be a timely and appropriate topic.
How much added sugar are we really supposed to be getting
anyways? According to the American Heart
Association, women shouldn’t have more than about 5 teaspoons a day (20 grams)
and men shouldn’t have more than 9 (36 grams).
Children should be limited to 3 teaspoons (or 12 grams) of added sugar
per day. Most Americans get more than 22
teaspoons, a fact that might surprise some of your students. These numbers don’t include the sugar
naturally founds in food like fruit.
This is the sugar that is added into many foods for extra sweetness.
This fall, I want to help students hunt down the hidden
sugar in their diets. They probably have
plenty of Halloween candy to use in this activity, so I plan to ask them to
each bring in a few pieces. If they
don’t have candy, they can bring in wrappers and containers from other popular
items like yogurt, cereal, soda, and other packaged snacks. Unfortunately, the nutrition information
isn’t on most fun-size candy passed out during trick-or-treating, so you might
need to do some online research. Looking
up the information online is a good technology lesson in itself, or you can
provide students a list of sugar content in popular candies. This list
is a good starting point.
When looking at ingredients, remember that the sugar content
is usually listed under carbohydrates. Sometimes it’s hard for students to
figure out which sugar is naturally occurring and which is added, but the
numbers will give you a rough idea of the amount of added sugar. The amounts are generally listed in grams, a weight
measurement students might not be familiar with. They might be more familiar with a volume
measurement like a teaspoon. What does a
gram of sugar look like? The following idea
is for an activity that will let students see the amount of sugar in each of
their snacks.
For this activity, I will start with 3 baby food jars (or
snack size zipper bags) in the front of the classroom, each one representing the
maximum amount of daily added sugar that kids and adults should get per day (3,
5, and 9 teaspoons). After a discussion
of added sugars, I will let the kids research their own snacks and create jars
or bags of the amount of sugar in each of their snacks.
For kids old enough to do the math themselves, there is
roughly 4 grams of sugar in each teaspoon (this can vary slightly by
granularity of the sugar, but it makes for a easy conversion for kids to
use). They can simply divide the number
of grams of sugar by 4 to determine the approximate number of teaspoons of
sugar in the snack.
I will also make a few examples, so I am sure there is a
wide range of snacks. I will do an
example bag for a can of soda, a sweetened yogurt, and a typical serving of a
sugary cereal. Once the kids have
created their bags of sugar, I will let them creatively present their results
to the class. It might be a neat
exercise to line up the bags with their wrappers in order of how much added
sugar they have. If we do this, we can
make a class chart so we can remember and compare our results.
Here are some more Gateway resources that will help you
study added sugars with your class:
Reading Labels: Which
Snack is the Best Choice?
Put Your Favorite
Beverage to the Test
Good Snack, Smart
Snack
Sugary cereals
Candy bar fractions
~ Peggy's Corner - November 1, 2011~
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