OLYMPICS TEACH YOUTH THE VALUE OF A GOOD BREAKFAST

Every four years we watch with pride as the United States Olympic team members strive for gold. In keeping with the Olympic spirit, 243 low-income, fourth grade students in our school nutrition program, “Food, Fun and Fitness,” participated in their own Olympic competition, the “Breakfast Olympics.” First, before the actual event begins, students watch a short skit featuring “Junkfood Janie” and what happens to her in school when she doesn’t get a healthy breakfast. Next they learn why it’s important to eat breakfast. Surprisingly, 59 of the 243 participating students, or 24%, admit to eating little or no breakfast the day of the lesson, despite having breakfast available at their school. In the culminating activity, the students pit different breakfast cereals against one another to determine which ones are the gold, silver, and bronze medal cereals when looking at fiber, sugar, salt, and iron content. By reading the labels, students discover an interesting fact. Cereals that are high in sugar are usually the lowest in sodium and visa versa. In this Olympic competition, the overall winner is Multi-Grain Cheerios. The kids are then asked to go home and together with their parent see how their own cereals stack up. One teacher shared a parent’s response to her child’s weekly “key learnings” assignment record. She wrote, “I am impressed that you are teaching the kids how to read food labels. Dylan couldn’t wait to check out how his favorite cereal would have scored in the “Olympics”. He was surprised that his Honey Nut Cheerios didn’t do nearly as well as the Multigrain Cheerios that they had looked at in class. He is now willing to give the healthier cereal a try.”

As a later follow-up lesson to this one, students actually get to taste some of the highest ranking cereals in the “Breakfast Olympics” activity. This lesson starts with two students volunteering to conduct an experiment. The smaller student is given a slice of plain white bread. The bigger student is given a slice of high-quality whole wheat bread. Both slices of bread are the same size. Each student is told to squeeze his slice into the smallest ball they can form without losing many crumbs. When the balls are formed, the class makes observations. The first thing students notice is that the plain white bread ball is much smaller than the whole wheat bread ball. What would account for this difference when they started out the same size? Theories are offered and discarded. Finally, students arrive at the conclusion that the gummier white bread is missing fiber. In this lesson, students learn about the benefits of whole grains and fiber, in particular. They then get the opportunity to taste test six different higher fiber cereals. While tasting, they compare labels for fiber content, determine the cost per serving, and rate the flavor so that they can determine which cereal is the best buy. Before the tasting begins, only 82 of the 243 students (34%) had ever tasted any of the healthy cereals being compared. At the end of the lesson, 97% of students find at least one healthy, higher fiber cereal that they like and would be willing to ask a parent to buy for them. Many students love all six cereals. Ultimately, we hope that students learn that just because a food, in this case cereal, is “healthy” doesn’t mean it has to taste bad. It can, in fact, be a delicious way to start the day off right.

Tammy Hansen, Nutrition Education Program Coordinator - 2007 Success Story

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