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Activity 8: Healthy vs Unhealthy foods


When kids start dictating what they will and won’t eat, there is bound to be some drama at the dinner table. Rather than just telling them to eat whatever I ask them to, I try to tell them why some foods should be eaten more than others. But you and I know it’s not easy to get them to agree. So we do a little task to reinforce this learning in a not-so-preachy way.

Materials required:

2 large paper plates

a piece of cardboard large enough to fit both paper plates

paper cut-outs of different kinds of foods from newspapers, magazines or printed off the internet

glue stick (non-messy)

Sketch pen

Activity:

1. You will need about 20 or 25 pictures of different kinds of foods, including fruits, salads, soups, roti, rice, curd, burgers, French fries, candies etc. You can look at the picture for what kids of foods I used.

2. Paste the two paper plates on the piece of cardboard and write ‘healthy food’ under one, and ‘junk food’ under the other.

3. Take a minute to explain to the child (yet again) how some foods make us strong, while some make us weak. Healthy foods like fruits and whole-grains give us the nourishment we need. Foods with a lot of sugar, fats and processed foods make us weak. When we get weak, we fall sick more, we don’t grow as much as we should and our brain doesn’t work as well as it should.

4. Now, ask them to glue the foods into the correct paper plate. You do one of each kind so that they get an idea. The picture shows you how we did it. Leave them to it and return after about ten minutes.
 
5.  Now go through the two paper plates to see if they have identified the foods correctly into the two categories. If they have made any errors, explain why that type of food does not belong to that category. For example, you may “Jalebis have a lot of sugar and are deep fried. So they are not too healthy and should be eaten only occasionally.”


Hang the piece of cardboard where they can see it. When they make demands for fast foods, ask them to check if that particular dish falls into the healthy plate. If not, then they should not be having that dish very often. So the next time they say, “Can I have a ___?” Ask them to go check the paper plates for their answer.  



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