Nutrition Lesson!

Since I have been trying to cut out sugar and eat not as many carbs these last couple of weeks, I have decided to restrict my kids on some of those foods too.  The problem is that I didn't pay much attention to nutrition before this and I find myself telling my kids that they can't eat as many starches or carbs and they respond with, "What is a starch?? What is a carb??" They do know what sugar is though!!

To counter this, we are going to have a nutrition lesson at our house THIS MORNING!

Our first step is to learn about the different food groups! I am going to take (how many food groups are there exactly??) 11 X 14 sheets of construction paper and label each one with a different food group. Then, as a group, we are going to draw/ write the different foods on them.  I might split up vegetables and fruits though. I also want to know what they get from each of these food groups, so we are going to write down what minerals and vitamins we get too. I thought this website would be helpful for that.

http://www.cyh.com/HealthTopics/HealthTopicDetailsKids.aspx?p=335&np=284&id=1443#2

We are also going to use this site if we need to come up with more ideas.

http://www.choosemyplate.gov/food-groups/

Difference between a vegetable and a fruit:
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/difference-between-fruit-and-vegetable.html

I am having trouble in one certain area.  My doctor told me to not eat so many grains, starches, rice, flour, etc, but on everything I see, it is saying to eat equal amount or more of grains to everything else.  She also told me that we need fat (good fat), but that isn't even on any chart!  She told me to buy a certain kind of milk because it had more fat in it!  I was also supposed to up my protein and fiber, and that is again not emphasized. I may need to call her or make a chart of my own!

Honestly, we are probably only going to get one or two food groups done today, so this will be an on-going lesson.

I have also decided that this will take place of our Bible lesson time for the week, I am going to name it "Food that God Provides For Us!" We are at a good stopping point in our Bible curriculum and we won't get through the next unit within the next month, so I was looking for something anyway to fill in the gap until the end of the school year. :)  We will only spend about a week on this and then I will have to find something else to finish the next couple of weeks!