Communities and Schools Promoting Health

A Gateway to information on comprehensive school health (CSH) and health promoting schools (HPS)
Providing links to research, reports, how-to manuals, planning & assessment tools, lesson plans and student webquests
   


 

Webquest on Healthy Eating/Nutrition
Analyze This!

Prepared By: Mary Shannon & Doug McCall  
Sponsored By: Canadian Diabetes Strategy, Health Canada

See the Teacher's Guide to this Webquest


 

Number of People for this WQ

  • This webquest can be done by one student and will take about 2-3 hours.

Outcomes for this WQ:

  • know more about food groups, fat and salt content and cholesterol

  • assess your food choices

Materials for this WQ

 

 

Documents for This WQ

 

Student Tools for this WQ

Evaluation Criteria/Procedure


 

Introduction

Does your school cafeteria offer healthy meal choices? Do the students in your school select these healthy choices? This webquest will analyze what the typical student in your school eat when they eat in the school cafeteria.

Task 

This short-term webquest asks students to prepare a research report on the menu choices offered at their school and the typical choices being made by students when selecting from that menu. An online Nutrition Analysis Tool will be used to evaluate the nutritional content of the foods selected.

Process

  1. Visit Health Canada's Food Guide and review their website to refresh your memory on food groups, salt and fat content and other aspects of food analysis.
     

  2. Meet with the manager of your school cafeteria and obtain copies of a weekly set of menu choices. Also ask the manger for statistics on the choices made by students to determine what is typically selected for each of the five days.

    From that information prepare a fictitious record of what the typical student in your school chooses from the school cafeteria menu for each of the five days. Don't forget to include a drink, the main meal/food items, dessert or snack, etc.

    If your school does not have a cafeteria you can still do this webquest by examining the cafeteria menu choices of these five schools:

    school 1, school 2, school 3, school 4, school 5
     

  3. Use the Nutrition Analysis Tool to prepare an analysis of these five meals. You will need to use the online tool to enter the data and then calculate the nutritional content of each meal.

  1. Evaluate these meal selections and nutrients in relation to Health Canada's Food Guide.

    Prepare a three page research report on your findings from your analysis. Before you prepare your report, review the Evaluation Criteria for Research Reports with your teacher to see which criteria will apply to this webquest.
     

    2.
  2. Use Section 4.1 of the Personal Health Planner as a reference in reflecting on this webquest.

    Are your food choices similar to the typical student or school when you select food in the cafeteria?

How Your Work will be Evaluated

  1. The research report submitted at the end of this webquest will be assessed using the Evaluation Criteria for Research Reports. See your teacher to see how these criteria will be applied to this webquest.

Conclusions and Extensions

  1. Once you have done this analysis, you may wish to embark on the webquest "School Cafeteria Makeover".
     
  2. You may wish to consider developing a personal plan to improve your menu choices for cafeteria and other restaurants. See Section 4.1g of the Personal Health Planner.