Lesson 5: Nutrition Laboratory
Grade Level: K-6
Suggested Time: 120 mins
Overview
Students will gain exposure to cultures around the world by studying food. They will compare common foods, gain knowledge about various economies by exploring food budgets, and analyze their own family’s relative experience by conducting an interview with a family member. Finally, students will test the nutrient loads of vegetables and fruits, using a number of scientific procedures including visual inspection, dissection, laboratory testing, and—of course—tasting!
Vocabulary
- Nutrition
- Public Health
- Population
- Currency
- Average Income
- Cultural Geography
- Cross-Cultural Comparison
- Nutritional Content
- Visual inspection
- Nutrient testing
- Graphing
Objectives
- Students will learn about world diversity in food traditions, and how diet connects with economics, health, and other internationally relevant subjects.
- Students will make important connections with their own lives.
- Students will gain exposure to the field Cultural Geography.
Required Project Materials
Multimedia Resources
Optional Multimedia Resources
Before the Lesson/ Background Information
- Purchase ripe and unripe fruits and vegetables from a farmer’s market or other local source (for local items), and a grocery or big box store (for imported items). Set up a comparison chart for analysis (for example, compare unripe big box/ ripe big box/ unripe farmer’s market/ ripe farmer’s market. Make sure you get the same type of vegetable from each source for variable control.
- Come up with a list of questions for the students to test such as:
Which is a bigger factor in nutrient load: ripeness, or origin?
Do local fruits and veggies have more nutrients than imported ones? Why or why not?
The Lesson
Part 1: Comparing Foods
- Read What the World Eats with the students.
- Review the terms in the book. Discuss the differences in food budgets described.
- Ask the students to discuss their own family experiences. What are their own cultural traditions?
- Ask the students to write a budget for a typical family meal at home.
- If there is time, the class may explore nutrition and food choices by playing the optional games, or explore themes around cost and poverty by reading Maddi’s Fridge.
Part 2: Family Interview
- Have students come up with questions for a family member based on the facts presented in the book. Each student will write down questions to ask the family chef. What can the students find out about their own food traditions? Are there any old recipes passed down?
- Students will share the results from their completed surveys and a family recipe.
Part 3: Nutrition Study
- Students will wash their hands thoroughly, then create a science station and line up each greenhouse-grown, organic vegetable or fruit next to its store-bought companion.
- Using field notebooks, students will write down and sketch the color and appearance of each item, comparing each by type.
- Then they will touch the item and note its texture.
- With paper towels on the cutting board, use the knife to slice each item. Clean the cutting board between pairs. Students will do a visual inspection of the interior and note color,texture, and juiciness.
- Use samples from each item to test nutrients and compare. Write the results down on a chart and graph them.
- Where possible, students will taste a sample of each pair. Which fruits and vegetables taste better? What do students mean by “better” or “worse”? They should write descriptions in their notebooks. Is there a relationship between taste and nutrient load?
- Work with the students to finish graphing their results and putting together their illustrations and notes into a class poster.
Accommodations
- Print out the terms that will be discussed.
- Instead of discussing, students could draw their family experience.
- Share a visual of an example budget for a family meal.
- Provide an example(s) of questions the student can ask their family member.
- Print out an example of what will be written in their field notebooks. For the writing section, they could write a couple of words that describe the item.
- Have large, spaced graph paper available.
Modifications
- Average the different lesson parts. If the grade will be focused on the class poster.
- Weight daily work higher than the final poster project.