The Food Group Pyramid

Introduction:

Nutritional education is an extremely important part of the physical education curriculum, in all grade levels. Learning about dietary nutrition and how to apply that knowledge to your every day lives is an indispensable skill that will stay with you throughout adulthood.

Activity:

Students are to go to the following website and review the “Five Food Group Pyramid.” The pyramid is interactive, in that the students can click on the specific hyperlinks below to learn more information about the food groups of their choice. You can also learn what is an appropriate, healthy meal based upon the country’s dietary guidelines, which outline the number of servings needed from each food group to constitute a healthy, balanced diet.

Activity Link - http://www.nal.usda.gov:8001/py/pmap.htm - you will go to this website, click on the parts of the pyramid you feel are important and create a menu for your family for one week. This activity is fact specific to each of your families in that everyone’s family make-up is different. If you have older grandparents or very young infant siblings living with you, for example, you must take their special dietary needs into consideration when creating your menu. Also, it will be important for you to note if anyone in your family has any health problems that can be controlled by their diet.

Assignment:

Your assignment is to fill in the menu below in the space provided for each day of the week, by creating a healthy menu for breakfast, lunch and dinner for your family. Your menu should include the number of servings for each person and the “food group” from which the specific item came. Print out the chart below and fill it in with your meal plan. Then write a short 1 page paper explaining how you came up with your menu, why, what information you used from the website, and if you created your menu around any specific members of your family. Be sure to put your name and date on the assignments to be turned in.

	*Breakfast*	*Lunch*	*Dinner*

*MONDAY:*



*TUESDAY:*




*WEDNESDAY:*



*THURSDAY:*



*FRIDAY:*



*SATURDAY:*



*SUNDAY:*