Label It!
Learning about food labels and how to use them to make informed choices when choosing food.
This activity requires food cards. Contact us to find out more about how to get food cards for your school.
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HWB 2-30a - By applying my knowledge and understanding of current healthy eating advice I can contribute to a healthy eating plan.
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HWB 2-36a - By investigating food labelling systems, I can begin to understand how to use them to make healthy food choices.
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HWB 3-36a - Using my knowledge of nutrition and current healthy eating advice, I can evaluate the information on food packaging, enabling me to make informed choices when preparing and cooking healthy dishes.
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HWB 2-15a - I am developing my understanding of the human body and can use this knowledge to maintain and improve my wellbeing and health.
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HWB 3-15a - I am developing my understanding of the human body and can use this knowledge to maintain and improve my wellbeing and health.
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HWB 2 -16a - I am learning to assess and manage risk, to protect myself and others, and to reduce the potential for harm when possible.
- We are learning to understand the colour coding on food labels.
- We are learning to make informed and healthy choices about food we eat and buy.
- I can explain what each colour code on the front of food packs means.
- I can name the different categories on the front of a food pack.
- I can predict the colour of each category for certain foods.
Resources
- Food Cards (main meals only)*
- Teacher's notes on food labelling
- Real food packaging for labels and print off example labels on worksheets.
- Make red/amber/green voting cards.
- FSS Cookin Castle interactive game
- Watch our video on colour-coded food labels
*If your school does not have a set of Food Cards, please request them from us at resources@fss.scot.
Activities
Warm up
- Sorting packaging by salt, sugar, fat and calorie content:
- with values covered up to explore initial perceptions of food
- with values revealed.
- Discussion of different results.
From teacher resources talk about:
- why some values are red/amber/green
- daily recommended allowance
- how this is calculated
- why this is important.
Creating graphs and charts
- Create graphs and pie-charts using the information on the front of packs, e.g. by comparing the calories, fat, saturated fat, sugar, salt against different products.
- Visually represent front of pack information in a different way for comparison.
Games-based activities
- Guess the colour for each category on a range of packaging (hold up main meals in food cards and teacher has examples of a nutritional label for each of them as an answer).
- Class has Red/Amber/Green cards to hold up/vote with when each category is shown.
- Values and colours are revealed.
- Discuss differences and healthy options.
Play Your Cards Right
- A game like the old T.V. show.
- Uses examples from food packaging rather than playing cards.
- Class needs to vote higher or lower for each category of content – e.g. compare 2 cards for one nutrient.
Find the healthiest food
- Show a range of packaged food using physical examples.
- Pupils need to identify the most/least healthy foods and explain why.
Cookin Castle – www.cookincastle.com
- Play Cookin Castle 'in the kitchen' game to create a day or week of healthy meals - look up front of pack information on supermarket websites to analyse meals cooked.
Homelink
Create and then play a game of Top Trumps - use information from food labels.
Assessment opportunities
Observations
Photographs as evidence
Top Trumps
Guess the colour games
Consider CfE Benchmarks, for example:
- Uses different food labelling system to select foods for a specified dietary requirement for example, low in fat.
- Evaluates information on food packaging and uises it to make infomraed choices when selecting food for given situations.
Cross-curricular Links
Literacy – listening and talking
Literacy – write about what makes a food healthy
Maths -percentages and charts
ICT
Differentiation
Support
- Mixed ability groups.
- Pre-prepared Top Trumps.
- Just focus on one category eg. Sugar at a time.
- Remove numbers and use colours or another visual representation eg. spoons of sugar.
Challenge
- Design your own system of denoting nutritional content of packaged food.
- Design your own food label Top Trumps.
- Introduce portion size, frequency of eating and recommended daily allowance.
- plan a healthy eating plan or class party.