• The Environment 1 - specific to the fast food industry
• The Environment 2 - positive activities
• Nutrition
• Ronald in the Spotlight
• Even More Stuff

NUTRITION

Personal and Social Education lesson

What I should know about my diet!

The aim of this lesson is to get the children to make the connection between their diet and the outside world. This will enable them to examine their own eating habits and realize that things don't grow on the supermarket shelves.

• Ask the pupils to draw up a chart as a whole class, to list their eating habits in breakfast, lunch and dinner catergories.
• Draw a ring around any meat product and ask the pupils which animal it comes from.
• If there are any vegetarians in the class, now would be a good time to explain the concept vegetarianism/veganism and why people chose this lifestyle.
• A great discussion could develop at this point but it is be best to return after the lesson is complete.
• Do the same with vegetables and fruits, grains and beans, and dairy products.(The last catergory is a contentious one as throughout our experience in schools we have found that pupils are not presented with the truth about dairy farms. It is their right to know. Just as we teach children about the facts of life so we should remain consistent and teach them the truth behind their diet.)
• In small groups ask the pupils to draw a pictorgram illustating and explaining how each foodstuff arrives on their plate to comprise a meal.

So ...

As the aim of this lesson is to make the connection between diet and the outside world it will now be necessary to consider the following issues associated with diet posed as questions:

• Does my meal contain any element of cruelty? Or did my meal get a fair deal?
• Now would be an ideal opportunity to draw on the McDonald's leaflet to explore the issues surrounding the junk food or fast food diet. Leaflets are available from...