Using The Activity

This activity has three elements:

• The 'Healthy Diet' survey.
• Using the 'Healthy Diet' activity on the Warburtons' website.
• Using a spreadsheet in class to explore variations in diet.

Follow the Activity link or download the food diary.

Introduce the activity by asking the children to do a quick survey of the food in their lunch boxes, or what they last had for school dinner.

Using an OHP of the food diary sheet, explain that all foods fall into five groups. Tell children that it's important to be aware of what we are eating, in order to make sure we have a healthy diet.

Use the factsheet showing the healthy diet pyramid, to show that we need to eat food from all groups, but some should be eaten in moderation!

Use the factsheet about different types of bread and bread products to illustrate how varied the items in food group A may be, eating lots of food from one group need not be boring! Make a collection of packaging for food items and build a wall display of the healthy diet pyramid.

Explain the purpose of undertaking the healthy eating survey, and how using a spreadsheet can assist in making decisions about a balanced diet.

Explain that tally marks are a quick way of jotting down data. Discuss how to complete the food diary, using tally marks and remind children throughout the week to complete their charts. Portions can be approximations, for example a round of cheese sandwiches can be recorded as bread, cheese and butter/margarine.

Discuss the five food groups, A to E, and explain what each food group is.

The healthy diet plate factsheet provides an illustration, other factsheets are useful for background information.

Children use the form on the Warburtons' website to enter data from their tally chart and compare the pie chart with Government recommendations. Emphasise that bread forms an important part of a healthy diet but that some people have special dietary needs or allergies, they must take care in following advice from the nutritionists.

Children can use a spreadsheet in class to analyse their diet and experiment with changing the number of portions they eat in a particular group can make their diet more balanced. Depending on the children’s experience with spreadsheets, it may be appropriate to prepare a sample to demonstrate how to add data to the cells for each food group. Use chart view to show children a pie chart of their data being formed as they add each total.