Learning to read nutrition labels is important because it allows you to make healthy food choices. Activities that help you do this will assist you and your family in becoming more knowledgeable about what constitutes a good food versus a bad food. Activities can also be used in the school setting when learning about nutrition. The nutritional facts label is located on the package for most foods so that you can evaluate and compare them to others.
Comparing Labels
Comparing food labels is an activity you can do alone, but is also a great way to teach children about reading them, both in a school or home setting. You will need two food labels from similar foods. AskDrSears.com recommends using cereal box labels. Choose two different types of cereal, one you think is healthy and one you are sure isn't. Let each participant taking part in the activity look at the two labels and discuss which one has more fat, sugar, calories and vitamins. This information will allow you and your group to make a determination regarding which cereal is a healthier choice. For older children and adults, you can discuss what role fat, calories, sugar, salt, and vitamins and minerals play in health and why they should be increased or limited.
Ranking Foods
Nutrition Explorations recommends a food-ranking activity for children in junior high, high school and adults as a way to teach them what to look for on a nutrition label when making healthy food choices. To do this activity, collect 4 to 5 different foods with labels. Without looking at the labels, participants should rank the foods in order of what they think is healthiest down to least healthy. Once they have organized their food items, they then analyze the nutrition labels to see if they were correct in their rankings. A variation on this activity is to rank the foods on a specific component of the label, such as most calories to least calories or most vitamin A to least. Large groups can break off into smaller ones to make discussion easier as the activity progresses.
Question and Answer
When a group of people is learning about the nutrition label, a good way to be sure participants are understanding the material is to have a question and answer session. To do this activity, pair off the people in the group and give each pair a nutrition label. Let each pair come up with a set of questions about the label. Indiana University recommends questions like, "What can you tell me about this food label?", "How many items are in the box based on serving size and number of servings?" and "How much fat is in half a serving or in two and a half servings?". Once the questions are complete, each pair trades with another pair and answers each other's questions. The two pairs can then discuss their findings.
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