Nutrition

These links are for students and teachers looking for nutrition information. Health, science, and family and consumer education classes can use these sites to find nutritional information, learn about food labeling, examine how the media influences our eating habits, and explore issues such as dieting and eating disorders. Math teachers may want to explore these sites for their wealth of numbers and percentages that could be used to create authentic problems about food and diet. (ECB also provides excellent video resources on nutrition for Wisconsin teachers.)

Elementary | Middle | High School | Instructional Video Series for Wisconsin Teachers

Elementary

The entertaining Dole 5 A Day site has lots of information about fruits and vegetables. The Kids section uses music, video, and animated games to teach basic nutritional information while encouraging children to eat their fruits and veggies. The site also features an illustrated kids cookbook and a nutritional information chart that can be sorted in different ways. The teachers' site includes suggestions for using the Kids' site, lesson plans, printable charts, and more.

Staying Healthy, from the Nemours Center for Children's Health Media KidsHealth site, provides information on a variety of nutrition topics, such as eating for sports, figuring out food labels, the food guide pyramid, and so on.

Hunger Facts, from Kids Can Make a Difference, provides brief facts about hunger, food, and nutrition worldwide.

The Kid's Food CyberClub features simple food facts in the form of quizzes. Designed for grades 3-5, this site from the Connecticut Association for Human Services and also includes recipes children have submitted.

Lunch-o-Matic from the PBS series Arthur challenges students to create a healthy meal by choosing different foods from a conveyor belt. Or help DW choose foods in Supermarket Adventure.

Check out Fizzy's Lunch Lab if if you're looking for nutritional information with a little fun mixed in. Set "in a place where a gruesome grease-monger can turn healthy kids into super-sized lazy zombies," this Web site from PBS features video segments and interactive games.

Middle

Plastic Fork Diaries is a Web-based serial story from Maryland Public Television. It follows six middle school students as they explore the relationship between food and their changing bodies, cultural differences, athletic performance, and family relationships. Nutritional information, recipes, food history, and other information is woven into the story or independently accessible. The site includes a downloadable activity guide.

SmartMouth, from the Center for Science in the Public Interest, provides nutritional information aimed at helping children make healthy food choices despite deceptive advertising. In one activity, students to create a meal with a variety of fresh or fast foods and compare readings on the sat-fat meter and the cal-o-meter.

BodyWise, from the GirlPower Web site, features sections on health, eating disorders, body image, and more. This site for 9- to 13-year-old girls is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHSS).

Fast Facts: Nutrition Facts on Popular Fast Food Restaurant Items allows users to find nutritional information for specific items like a Big Mac or a bean burrito. Users can also search by maximum amount of calories, fat, cholesterol or sodium or sugar, or for fast food items that have certain allergen factors.

Foodlink is a useful site for information on food safety. Offered by the British Food and Drink Federation, the site includes an encyclopedia of food safety tips and sections on food poisoning, hygiene, food storage, and food preparation.

Space Food, from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), features a space food fact sheet, video clips about how astronauts eat in space, how space food is packaged and more.

High School

The Mayo Clinic's Food and Nutrition Center provides a wealth of information,including dietary guidelines and a comparison of food pyramids for different cultures (scroll down to Food Pyramid Guide). Though written for adults, the site contains lots of information of interest to teens. The Healthy Recipes Center could be useful for practical classes.

The USDA Food and Nutrient Laboratory site allows users to search for values in the USDA National Nutrient Database. PDA (personal data assistant) users may download this dataset. Students also can get lists of food items containing specific nutrients such as protein, fat, iron, or sodium.

NutritionData is a site designed to aid in analyzing nutrition facts. The site, developed by two fitness enthusiasts, uses USDA data but provides additional tools for search and analysis. A graphic depiction of the caloric ration (percentage of the food’s calories that come from carbohydrates, fats, and protein) of each food is a useful feature. The Pantry function allows users to save specific foods and create recipes or meals which can then be analyzed. The Fast Food Finder gives quick access to nutrition facts for 10 popular fast food chains.

Food and Fitness, from the Nemours Center for Children's Health Media TeensHealth site, provides information on nutrition, dieting, exercise, and eating disorders, as well as recipes.

Nutrition - Healthy Living, from the 4 Girls Health Web site, provides basic nutritional information especially written for teen girls. Included are sections on weight control, understanding nutritional labels, vegetarian diets, and more. This site was developed by the DHSS Office on Women's Health to give girls between the ages of 10 and 16 reliable, current health information.

The USDA's Food and Nutrition Information Center provides information on food composition, dietary guidelines, and more.

This portal site for U.S. Government information on nutrition contains many fact sheets, statistics, and government reports.

The Canadian Office of Nutrition Policy and Promotion features Canada's Food Guide to Healthy eating, information on food labeling and other nutritional information.

The British Broadcasting Corporation's (BBC) Introduction to Nutrition site includes articles on different nutrition topics as well as some "cool tools," such as a calorie calculator and a quiz.

The University of Illinois Nutritional Analysis Tool allows users to create a personal diet list. It analyzes your list for nutrientional content, and compares it to the recommended daily allowances. It will also suggest different foods to supplement your diet. An energy calculator will also calculate the number of calories you burn in a day.

Instructional Video Series for Wisconsin Teachers

Wisconsin teachers may tape these programs about nutrition for classroom use. Click on each link to find information about the program, teacher guide and broadcast schedule from the ECB Instructional Database.

Yum from Good Bodies (grades K-2)

Fueling Up from Head to Toe (grades 1-2)

Gregory the Terrible Eater from Reading Rainbow (grades 1-4)

Media Wise from Life Skills 101 (grades 2-3)

Nutrition: The Food Pyramid from The Inside Story (grades 3-4)

Pros and Cons of Being a Vegetarian from Inquiring Minds (grades 4-8)

Tracking Nutrition from Teaching Through Technology (grades 6-8)

Nutrition from Our Human Body (Grades 7-12)

The Discovery of Dawn from Issues for the Millenium (Grades 7-12)

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