Health Quests

Overview
In the activity, students visit several Web sites that contain live school lunch menus. They also visit a site that provides a downloadable copy of the booklet Nutrition and Your Health: Dietary Guidelines for Americans in Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) format. They then use this document along with ideas gathered from the school sites to create a lunch menu for a school in their own community that is both appealing and nutritionally sound.

Objectives

• To recognize the Dietary Guidelines for Americans posted on the World Wide Web as a useful tool in making healthful food choices.
• To understand the importance of variety, moderation, and balance in developing a nutritious eating plan.
• To create a lunch menu that satisfies the nutritional needs of elementary school-age children.

Getting Started
Introduce the activity by asking students whether they have seen food ads that make claims such as "good and good for you." Ask: Is it possible for a food to meet both these criteria? Have students answer by volunteering the names of seasonal foods that most people enjoy eating (for example, fresh corn on the cob, plump berries and other summer fruits), noting that such foods provide needed nutrients--and hence might be considered good for you--while giving you a pleasurable eating experience. Invite students to log on to the on-line activity page, observing that the first five labels listed under Health Links are links to actual school lunch pages in various parts of the country.

Classroom Follow-up
Set aside a portion of a class period for students to share and compare the menus they devised. Discuss which of the menus incorporated foods that met the Daily Values for various nutrients noted in the Dietary Guidelines, and also offer mealtime possibilities that might appeal to an elementary school student. Invite students to submit copies of their menus--and, where called for, original recipes--to schools in the community. Any letters received in reply from school nutritionists and/or dietitians may be used as an assessment benchmark of student success on the project.