President Kennedy originally designated National School Lunch Week to honor the program that helps children afford meals and learn the benefits to be derived from good nutrition.
Now, more than five decades later, for a group of Marlton Middle School sixth-grade students currently taking their consumer science class, this year’s National School Lunch Week Oct. 13–17 has fittingly coincided with their dietary analysis project.
At some point throughout the year, all sixth-grade students at the school will take a consumer science class to teach them the basics of cooking and healthy eating, and this year the project came at the perfect time.
Consumer science teacher Joanne Wiest said the dietary analysis project helps students compare what they actually eat during one day and what they’re supposed to be eating during one day according to the U.S. government’s “My Plate” food icon program, which emphasizes fruit, vegetable, grains, protein foods and dairy groups.
“The My Plate on the computer has an interactive portion where you can plug in your age, your height, your activity level and your gender, and it will tell you, you need to eat six ounces of grain a day, two cups of vegetables a day, so then they’re going to compare that to what they are actually eating for one day,” Wiest said.
For the project, students in the class will track the grains, vegetables, fruits, milk and dairy, meat and beans, and other foods they eat during a day, along with any physical activities they perform, and then they’ll analyze how often they eat from the different groups of food.
The students will also determine the best and worst things about their diets.
Wiest, who majored in nutrition in college, said she is a big advocate of healthy eating in both her personal and professional life.
Although she only has each group of sixth-grade students in her class for about 37 days of the school year, she tries to teach them as much about healthy eating as she can.
“I try to get as much of the important stuff out there in that short amount of time,” Wiest said. “I’m just really passionate about nutrition with them because it’s my life… and I am such an advocate of healthy eating and label reading, eating real food — non processed stuff.”
According to Wiest, students always have a positive reaction to their time in consumer science, as it’s so different from most other academics since they
get to cook, eat and talk about food.
“I think they probably love the cooking part more than the nutrition part, but I try to make it fun, and I’m enthusiastic and I try to keep things fresh,” Wiest said. “They love it a lot.”
One student currently in the class is 11-year-old Erin Matthews.
After having the project introduced to her, she said it sounded fun and would be interesting to see what everyone else eats throughout the day.
“I’m very interested in nutrition and eating healthy and this class was very very interesting. We learned about eating a balance diet what you should eat and shouldn’t eat.”
Another student in the class, Robert Abboud, age 12, said it was fun learning about nutrition and food, and it helps him and his family eat better at home.
“I help my mom a lot with chopping and stirring,” Abboud said. “Most of the time when I leave school I remember what we learned here, and I make healthier food choices because of it.”
