Part of Lesson Plan: The Food Pyramid (& Now Plate) & You

Activity Overview / Details

Using the new Choose My Plate website, students will be instructed to bring to class a food journal that covers just the weekend (or two days during the week depending upon when you use this activity). I am looking for a basic itemization of what they ate and when they ate it during the day.

Once students have this information with them in class, we will go to the website and use the Daily Food Plan interactive tool. http://www.choosemyplate.gov/myplate/index.aspx

By entering in their Age, Sex, Weight, and Daily Exercise...it will produce a simple food type list for them based on a weekly consumption profile. (Please note, that becasue students will have only two days of recorded diet, you will have to have them do some simple math to extrapolate how the two recorded days would span a week's time, given that they have similar eating habits throughout the week.)

This activity can be done very quickly in class and allows students to print up their suggested food types intake menu and then do some comparisons against their current eating habits.