Classroom time: 20 to 30 minutes

Students will be able to:

1. develop skills in food label reading.

2. recognize the many uses of eggs in various products.

1. health: identifying, comparing and analyzing

2. language arts: reading comprehension

1. cookbooks

2. food packages, wrapper and labels

     Most nutrition professionals agree that Americans on the whole need to consume more complex carbohydrates (starch) and fiber – which are found in grain foods, fruits and vegetables – and less fat.   Many people also need to limit the amount of sweets they eat. Some need to limit their salt (sodium) consumption. For heart health, a small percentage of people need to pay close attention to the cholesterol they consume. For most pre-teens, though, it’s more important to reduce total fat in the diet, especially saturated fat, than to worry about cholesterol consumption. For school-age children, to reach the recommended goal of no more than 30% of calories from fat (at 9 calories per gram), aim for:

• children ages 7 through 10, weighing about 62 pounds, consuming about 2,000 calories, about 67 grams of fat a day;

• girls and boys ages 11 through 14, weighing about 100 pounds, consuming about 2,200 to 2,500 calories, about 73 to 83 grams of fat a day.

     One good way to learn more about the foods you eat is by reading labels. In addition to the name of the food product, the size of a serving and other information, a food label tells you the food product’s ingredients and the total nutrients in those ingredients.

     To choose the more healthful of two foods, compare their nutrient and ingredient labels. On labels, the amounts of various nutrients in the food are listed as percentages of Daily Values (DVs). By comparing numbers, you can choose the food that has more of the nutrients that you should eat in larger quantities and less of those that you should eat more sparingly.

     On the ingredient panel, all the ingredients of a food product are listed by weight in descending order. The exact weight isn’t as important as the order. For example, a cereal box might say: "corn, wheat, rice, sugar". That box would be a better choice to buy than another cereal box which says, "corn, sugar, wheat, rice" because the first cereal has more grains and less sugar than the second. Similar comparisons can be made when looking for other nutrients, too.

     Sometimes the names of the ingredients can be confusing. When you’re checking sweets on a label, in addition to sugar, look for glucose, fructose, maltose, lactose, honey, syrup, corn sweetener, corn syrup, molasses and fruit juice concentrate, too. When looking for salt, also check the label for any ingredient with sodium in its name, baking powder, baking soda and MSG (monosodium glutamate).

     Because they serve many functions as ingredients in recipes (see Lesson 4), eggs are used in a large variety of food products. Depending on other ingredients as well as whether whole eggs, yolks or whites are used, these products vary in nutrient composition.

LESSON PROCEDURE

1. Have students use cookbooks or brainstorm to develop a list of recipes or food products that contain eggs.

2. Bring in or have students bring in samples of food packages, wrappers and labels. Have students analyze them to:

1. Find the variety of food products in which eggs are used.

2. Analyze their overall nutrient content along with the presence of fat, sugar and salt.

1. Working in groups, have students create and design a package with appropriate labeling for a new food product containing eggs.

2. In small groups, have students sort food packages, labels and wrappers into the five major food groups, using the first ingredient on the label to determine the group.