Teaching Sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

20 minutes	Part B: Introducing the Nutrition Information Panel
20 minutes	Part C: Recommended Serving Size
10 minutes	Part D: Reflecting on Serving Size

Part A: Setting Up

In this section, students estimate a realistic portion size with a given food. You will need to have a few boxes of whatever food you choose, so that students can portion out a realistic serving. If, for instance, you want to split students into four groups, and you want them to create a portion of cereal, you might need four boxes of cereal so that students can portion out a typical serving size. Each group will also need a set of scales. Some of this planning will need to happen before class.

We recommend cereal as a good option for this activity, as it’s a food that most people eat every day. As a secondary option, you could use the type of chocolate that breaks cleanly into squares. It’s more a treat food, so it might not have the same impact as cereal. You will probably also need to monitor students closely to make sure they don’t eat whatever food you provide them.

Because this activity is designed to show how the recommended serving size doesn’t always match a realistic serving size, think critically about the food that you choose. Some foods might have quite accurate recommended serving sizes, while others may be less realistic. We recommend selecting high-sugar junk foods, which often have serving sizes that do not reflect the reality of what people actually eat in a sitting. Our friends at SugarByHalf have made up some example selections that you could draw on; you can find them here.

Step 1.

Split students into groups, and supply them with your chosen food and some sort of plate or bowl for holding their portion. Ask them to dispense the amount that they might eat in one typical sitting. Again, you may need to monitor students closely during this step, particularly if you have given them chocolate or some other food that might be surreptitiously consumed. Once students have portioned out a realistic serving size, set the servings aside - we will return to them later, to compare them to the recommended serving size.

Part B: Introducing the Nutrition Information Panel

In this section, we introduce students to the components of the NIP that will be most relevant for this lesson: the Average Quantity Per Serving column, and the Serving Size.

You can explore the other categories with students if you want, but they won’t be immediately as important in the context of this lesson. The introductory information in the Teacher Content Information (above) may be useful if you wish to explore the NIP in more depth.

Step 1.

Provide students with a selection of NIPs collected from various packaged foods. If you can plan this in advance, you might ask students to bring in NIPs from packaging around their homes - although we still recommend bringing some of your own NIPs as back-ups, as some students will inevitably forget.

Step 2.

Ask the students to get into pairs and examine the NIPs. Students should discuss what they know about each section or what they think each section may mean. The students can use the blank information panel provided on the student worksheet to write down some of their thinking.

Depending on time here, you might encourage students to range across the whole NIP, or you may wish to restrict them to the Average Quantity Per Serving and Serving Size areas, which will be most relevant for this lesson.

Step 3.

After five minutes of discussion, encourage students to share some of their thinking with the class. You may like to ask some leading questions, such as ‘Why do you think this section is important?’ or ‘Why do you think manufacturers would need to include this particular information?’ Such questions may precipitate further discussion and provoke students to explain more of their thinking. Again, make sure to firmly establish the function of the recommended serving size and the Average Quantity per Serving column, as these sections will form the basis of the rest of the lesson.

Part C: Recommended Serving Size

In this step, students measure out the recommended serving size and compare it to their original realistic serving size. They learn about how to use scales and create a scale factor for changing the NIP to reflect their realistic serving sizes.

Step 1.

Bring out scales for each group and ask them to measure the weight of their realistic serving sizes.

This step may involve extra work if students are storing their portions in bowls or some other container. You may need to include some extra work here to zero out the weight of the container. There are a few ways you could do this:

If, for instance, your scales have a Tare function, you could use that to zero the weight of the container. Students might put their serving size into a second container, put the first, empty container on the scales, and then use the Tare function to set the scales to 0. They may then pour the serving size into the container on the scales.

Alternately, if your scales do not have a Tare function, an empty container may need to be weighed separately so that students can deduct its weight from the final number on the scales.

You can use this opportunity to help students think critically about what accurate measuring involves. You might start by asking students whether there are any problems with simply measuring the container and food together, without distinguishing between them. You might then ask students to brainstorm some potential ways to remove the weight of the container from the equation. Some students might suggest placing the food directly onto the scales: depending on your food, this might be an entirely sensible and practical decision. In other scenarios, maybe less so. Cereal might get a bit messy, and soft drink would go everywhere. You may wish to remove this step by selecting a food that can easily be placed on the scales by itself (for instance, chocolate could probably be quite straightforwardly placed on the scales). Alternately, you might want to make the process harder for students by choosing some messy food, or even by giving them multiple small containers that need their weights calculated individually.

Once your students have figured out how to eliminate the weight of the container(s), ask them to calculate the weight of their realistic serving sizes.

Step 2.

Now that your students have the weight of their realistic serving sizes, ask them to compare the weight to the recommended serving size.

This would be a good opportunity to discuss comparisons with students and the best way to go about comparing two amounts. Commonly, students may work out the difference between the two values and suggest that one is more than the other by a given amount (for instance, by saying that ten is five more than five). Although this method is correct in itself, we want students to figure out the scale factor so that they can increase or decrease the relevant nutritional information. That is, if students can identify that ten is twice as much as five, they can take ‘twice as much’ and use that to increase the numbers in the Average Quantity Per Serving column.

We recommend students calculate the scale factor with this method:

For example, if the students’ realistic serving size is 55g, and the recommended serving size is 30g, then the equation would be

55g ÷ 30g = 1.83

The scale factor would be 1.83.

You may wish to model this equation with your own example serving size before asking students to do the math themselves. It will also be important to support students here: if they are consuming over the recommended serving size, that does not necessarily mean that they are eating unhealthily or that they should be ashamed or embarrassed about their eating. The bigger point here is that the recommended serving size can be out of step with the amount someone would generally consume in one sitting. To really understand the nutritional value of what we’re eating, we need to apply our scale factor to the Average Quantity Per Serving column of the NIP.

Step 3.

Students can now go through and apply their scale factor to the NIP’s Average Quantity Per Serving column, multiplying each number by their scale factor. This work might be done manually, or with a calculator, depending on the ability of your class and your time allowance and pedagogical inclinations. You may also wish to circulate and help students who may be struggling.

Part D: Reflecting on Serving Sizes

Step 1.

Ask your students about their reactions to the difference between the recommended serving size and their realistic portion sizes.

Questions you might like to ask include:

How do you feel after learning about the difference between what’s recommended and what we realistically eat?
Is the recommended serving size very realistic? Or is it unrealistic?
If you are working with a breakfast cereal, you might want to ask students whether the recommended serving size would be enough for a proper breakfast, or whether it seems too small to be properly filling.
If you are working with junk food or snacks, you might ask students how the packaging influences our serving sizes. For instance, some chips come in multi-packs, where you purchase one large plastic bag containing several smaller single-serve packets of chips. How does that packaging change our understanding of the recommended serving size, as opposed to, say, a regular bag of chips?

Again, the food that you have chosen will influence the shape of this conversation. You may wish to provide students with further examples - for instance, some chocolate bars which we might assume to be single-serve portions claim to contain multiple servings. A little preliminary research will go a long way here. Alternately, you might even set students a short research project. Online websites for major supermarket chains often contain NIP information on the product pages for different products - this information would allow students to investigate and compare serving sizes between similar foods.

Step 2.

As a final extension, after discussing the recommended serving size with students, you can shift the discussion into a marketing and advertising mode. You might ask students why the recommended serving size is smaller than the realistic serving size. What is the benefit for food companies to recommend a small serving size? There is a larger conversation here around how companies market and present their products as healthy, even when they might not be. You might want to bridge here into some of the learning in our SugarByHalf English lessons, where we deal more explicitly with advertising tactics. Other opportunities for reflecting on marketing might present themselves to you, depending on the food(s) that you have chosen to work with.

Differentiated Learning

Extension -

After determining the scale factor of your chosen food in Step C, you could calculate the actual intake of the different components of the food. For instance, you could calculate the sugar intake, and use that as a bridge into a wider conversation about our sugar consumption and its impact and effects. Our SugarByHalf HPE lessons might provide the context and background for that wider conversation.

Teacher Reflection

Take this opportunity to reflect on your own teaching:

What did you learn about your teaching today?
What worked well?
What didn't work so well?
What would you share?
Where to next?
How are you going to get there?

SugarByHalf - Portion Problems

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