Eat well

Before this session, read The Eatwell Guide information. This will provide useful background detail about The Eatwell Guide. You may also wish to take a look at The Eatwell Guide videos. 

Using The Eatwell Guide presentation (5-7), ask the children to look at the image of The Eatwell Guide and tell you what they can see. Encourage them to notice that:

• there are five food groups;
• they are different colours and contain different foods;
• the groups are different sizes;
• there is a glass showing how many drinks are needed.

Help the children engage further with the Guide by asking them to name food they can see that they have tried before.   

Explain to the children that the food we eat can be sorted into five groups. Ask if they can suggest what the groups might be called by looking at the types of food they contain. After you have taken one or two answers for each group, tell the children the food group names:

• Fruit and vegetables;
• Potatoes, bread, rice, pasta and other starchy carbohydrates;
• Beans, pulses, fish, eggs, meat and other proteins;
• Dairy and alternatives;
• Oil and spreads.

The five food groups are shown individually on the Five food group cards. You may like to use these as flash cards to test if children can remember the group names or these could be displayed.

Display The Eatwell Guide poster (basic) at an accessible height for the children. From The Eatwell Guide food cards, select a food for each of the five groups. Show one card at a time and ask a child to attach the card to the poster by the correct food group. Work through the five cards and then repeat the activity a few more times to help embed where different food belongs on The Eatwell Guide.

Cut along the perforated lines on the Food selection worksheet to create five strips of food. The children will need a strip each so you will need multiple copies of this sheet. Give each child a copy of The Eatwell Guide worksheet and a strip of food. Task the children to cut and stick the food into the correct groups on their worksheet.  

Children could place the cut outs in position so they can be checked first. When they have attached all the images, they can draw other food in the food groups on their worksheet. You may wish to have The Eatwell Guide poster (basic) available for reference.

Try the Eatwell Challenge interactive activity/game.

Show children The Eatwell Guide poster (basic) or The Eatwell Guide presentation (5-7). Question them about the size of the food groups:

• Which are the largest groups?
• Which is the smallest group?
• What does this mean?

Explain that this shows us which groups we should eat more or less. Check that the children can identify the larger groups from which we should eat more and the smaller groups from which we should eat less.

Explain to the children that to stay healthy we need to eat a variety of food from within the four main food groups shown on The Eatwell Guide.  The four main food groups are:

• Fruit and vegetables;
• Potatoes, bread, rice, pasta and other starchy carbohydrates;
• Beans, pulses, fish, eggs, meat and other proteins;
• Dairy and alternatives.

Only a little is needed from the Oil and spreads group, e.g. a little spread on a sandwich, a little oil for cooking.

Explain to the children that some food is not needed for health and ask if they can give any examples.  Explain that food such as chocolate, crisps, cakes, ice cream and sweets are not needed. These types of food are often high in fat, salt and sugar so if they are eaten it should only be occasionally and in small amounts.

Set the children the challenge of planning a healthy lunch that includes food from the four main food groups of The Eatwell Guide. They can use the My lunch worksheet or create a painting or collage of the lunch.

Show the children the Fruit and vegetable food group using The Eatwell Guide presentation (5-7) The Eatwell Guide poster (basic) or Five food group cards. Explain that you are going to look closely at the Fruit and vegetable group. Ask the children to name the fruit and vegetables they can see.

Discuss with the children what they think should be eaten from this group each day. Tell the children that everyone should eat at least five portions* of fruit and vegetables every day. Variety is important.

Ask the children what they like in this group and what fruit and vegetables they ate yesterday.

Explain to the children that all different types of fruit and vegetables count, for example:

• fresh;
• frozen, e.g. frozen peas;
• dried, e.g. raisins;
• canned, e.g. sweetcorn;
• juice, e.g. orange juice.

Draw a character on the board. This might be a character from a book or television programme with which the children are familiar. Ask the children to help you plan how the character can eat at least 5 A DAY. Note what the character will eat and when.

• As a rule of thumb, a portion is what fits into the palm of a hand. Juice/smoothies should be limited to a combined total of 150ml per day. For dried fruit, an adult portion is 30g so a child’s portion would be a little less. Dried fruit only counts as one portion of 5 A DAY. Dried fruit can stick to teeth, which may lead to tooth decay, so it’s best to keep dried fruit to mealtimes and not between meals.

Organise the children into groups of five. Give each child in the group a copy of the Fantastic folding 5 A DAY worksheet. Explain that by working together, they are going to plan the 5 A DAY for the character (discussed earlier in the session) for Monday through to Friday. Allocate a day of the school week to each child in the group of five. Each child should write the day of the week and character’s name on the top of the sheet and then fold this section over (backwards) along the dotted line. They should then pass the sheet to the person to their left who will write or draw the first 5 A DAY fruit or vegetable in section one. The sheet is then folded backwards again and passed to the next person who will repeat this and so on until five fruit and/or vegetables have been recorded and the sheet passed back with the original author. The children can then unfold the sheet they originally started and read out the 5 A DAY the character will have on that day of the week.

Discuss the 5 A DAY that has been planned for the character for each day:

• Is there a variety or are their duplications within a day?
• Is there a good mix of fruit and vegetable or is it all fruit or all vegetables?
• Would they swap any of the options to get a better variety?

Look at the week as a whole for the character and consider the same questions. In addition, does the week include fresh, frozen, canned, dried and juiced varieties of fruit and vegetables?

Summarise for the children that we all need to each at least 5 A DAY, every day and this should be a variety of different fruit and vegetables.

Talk to the class about their favourite food and their reasons for liking the food.

Ask the children about food they do not like and ask for their reasons. Encourage the use of new vocabulary and all the senses (i.e. sight, touch, hearing, smell and taste) when they explain their reasons. Show or display the Sensory vocabulary cards to support. 

You may wish to use the I like that presentation to introduce this topic. If used on an interactive whiteboard, you can record the children’s answers.

Task the children to complete the Food and drinks I like worksheet. Children can list or draw the foods.

Explain to the children that the food they like now might change as they get older. Have the children already noticed they now like a food they didn’t in the past? Task the children to speak to an adult at home to find out if they now enjoy any food they disliked as a child.

Talk to the children about what they eat and drink at different times of the day, e.g. breakfast, lunch, evening meal, snacks. Use the Mealtimes presentation to support the discussion.

Task the children to record what they eat and drink throughout the day on the Mealtimes worksheet. They can draw or write their responses.

Explain that we need to eat regularly during the day. Ask the children whether they can remember why our bodies need food. We need food so our bodies can grow, be active and stay healthy.

Talk to the children about what they eat on special occasions, e.g. parties, weddings, Christmas, Eid, Hanukah.

• Who prepares the special food?
• How and where is it eaten?
• What special occasions can they name?

Show the Special occasions presentation to introduce a selection of occasions and food eaten at these times.

You may wish to bring in some samples of food eaten at special times for the children to taste. 

Invite parents/carers into school to talk about occasions for them when special food is eaten.

• Create a display with the Sensory vocabulary cards and encourage the children to add new words to build on this.
• Hold a tasting session so the children can taste different types of food, e.g. breads, vegetables, cheeses.
• Carry out a class survey to find out what is the most popular of a certain type of food, e.g. fruit.
• Organise a cooking session to make a dish for a special occasion.

Use the Eatwell Guide presentation to refresh children’s knowledge about healthy eating. Ensure the children can identify the food in each food group and that they can discuss the key health messages associated with each group.

Explain to the children that sometimes we eat a food by itself and other times we eat different types of food together. Ask the children to choose a food they can see on the Eatwell Guide and say whether they would have it by itself or with other food. For example, we might eat a piece of fruit or a yogurt by itself, but we would probably eat a piece of salmon or chicken with other food, such as potatoes and peas.

Show the Meals and snacks presentation, e.g. shepherd’s pie.

Look at each dish in turn and ask the children to identify a food in the dish and the food group to which it belongs. Talk to the children about ingredients which may be in the dish but cannot be seen, e.g. oil (for cooking), spread (in sandwiches).

For example:

Task the children to find different meals and snacks in recipe books, magazines or on the internet and analyse them using the What is it made from? worksheet. The children could also use the World food cards for this activity.

When the children have finished the task, ask them to share some of the meals and snacks they have found, state the ingredients they contain and where they belong on the Eatwell Guide.

Summarise that most of the meals and snacks we eat contain food from more than one food group.  This helps us to have the different types and varieties of food we need for health.

Show the Eatwell Guide image on the Eatwell Guide presentation 7-11 or the Eatwell Guide poster. Discuss the size of the different food groups and what this means. Take each group in turn and question the children:

• Is this a large, medium or small group?
• What size do you think this group is as a percentage or fraction?
• How much of our diet do you think should come from food in this group?

Establish the following points about the groups:

Explain to the children that they will keep a record of what they eat for two days to see if what they eat in this time is in proportion with the Eatwell Guide. They will also record their drinks to make sure they are having 6-8 drinks a day. The children can record this on the Food and drink diary worksheet. Print copies or display the Eatwell Guide poster for children to refer to as they complete this task. Summarise that the Eatwell Guide shows how much of what we eat overall should come from each food group. This means that if we set out all the food we ate over a few days or a week it should be in the proportions shown on the Eatwell Guide (as described in the table above).

If you think the children may find it difficult to know where the food they eat belongs, you may like to provide copies of the Eatwell Guide food list. This lists a variety of foods found in each group, in addition to those represented by images on the Guide.

Once the children have completed their Food and drink diary worksheet, discuss how what they ate and drank over two days compares to what is shown on shown on the Eatwell Guide.

• Did most of the food you ate come from the Fruit and vegetables and Potatoes, bread, rice, pasta and other starchy carbohydrates food groups? Around a 1/3 from each group?
• Did you have some foods from both the Beans, pulses, fish, eggs, meat and other proteins and Dairy and alternatives groups, with slightly more coming from the Beans, pulses, fish, eggs, meat and other proteins?
• Did you have just a small amount from the Oil and spreads group?
• Did you have 6-8 drinks each day?
• Did you have either no Foods high in fat, salt and sugars, or just a little?
• Do you think you should be eating more/less from any of the groups?

Summarise that it is OK if our diet is not in the exact Eatwell Guide proportions every day, but we should try to be in these proportions over a few days or a week or so to make sure we are getting the balance and variety of food our body needs to stay healthy.

Task the children to work in pairs to devise a menu showing food and drink for a day that reflects the Eatwell Guide. You could provide images and recipe books for inspiration. Use the Menu planner worksheet and the Eatwell food list worksheet.

When the children have finished, ask them to share their menus and consider these alongside the Eatwell Guide.