Wednesday, April 14, 2010

A Food Revolution

Have you caught any of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution on tv? I enjoyed the first couple of episodes and was quite shocked/saddened by a few things I saw. I decided to show my class two clips and do a bit of my own research.

#1. I was so surprised that the seven(ish) year old kids on the show did not know the difference between a potato and a tomato, yet could readily identify pizza and chicken nuggets.

We have a phys ed teacher at my school who discusses nutrition with the kids so I wasn't positive how much my class knew about names of foods. I played the clip where Jamie Oliver asks the kids the names of fruits and vegetables, but paused every time to see if my class knew the names. They could identify everything but the beet (thought it was a turnip). Success!

#2. How disgusting was it when the kids on the show wanted to eat those chicken nuggets, even after they saw how they were made (from bones and carcass and skin and other crud)???? Gross me right out.

I showed the chicken nugget clip to my class and they were all revolted. I then asked how many still wanted to eat those chicken nuggets and (oh dear) three out of nineteen said yes. Granted, these are the three kids that would probably eat dirt for a snack, but still. Peer pressure is so funny, too. After they saw their classmates looking at them all crazy like, they told me, oh no no no, I meant, no I would never eat those nuggets in a million years.

I've been spending a lot of time going over Canada's Food Guide with the kids and today I had them plan meals/snacks for a whole day. I asked them to add the totals of each food group to see if they were close to the recommended amounts.

One group told me what they had planned to eat for breakfast: cereal, milk, half a bagel, two eggs, an apple, and a glass of OJ. And then we ran out of time. I see I still have some work ahead of me!

2 comments:

  1. I love the food revolution. I've really been making a point to eat nice and simple and healthy since watching this show.

    On another note, that looks like soft serve strawberry ice cream....yum! ;)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think it's great that you are trying to help your class know the difference between good and bad foods. I bet there are a lot of foods that we wouldn't eat if we really knew how they were made. Same goes for restaurants... lots of places we wouldn't eat if we saw the kitchen first..... ew...

    ReplyDelete