Chartwells hold session with Year 8 about nutrition so they can make healthier choices

The session started with an activity where each group were given a different brand of snack bar. They were tasked with looking at the packaging and making note of what the branding was trying to sell to the consumer, the top five ingredients and how much sugar there was per bar. The class found that some of the bars advertised that they were fortified with vitamins or would give you energy for the whole morning. However, it was no surprise that most of the bars had sugar in their top five ingredients and the amount of sugar per bar was over a teaspoon. This exercise was to highlight the importance of looking into the nutritional information on the back of products instead of solely looking at the claims made on the front of packaging.

After this, the class then looked at numerous food products and thought more in depth about the 'pros' and 'cons' to each one. An example of this was coconut oil. Although coconut oil has been a recent 'trend' and seen as healthier than other oils, often it contains more saturated fat than margarine or butter.

Lastly, to show the class how easy it was to make your own snacks at home each group had the opportunity to make their own oat based snack, create a name and logo to go alongside it and then pitch their product to the rest of the class. 

At the end of the lesson, the class seemed more informed in how they should be looking more closely at the nutritional information of products and making healthier choices.