Life Skills for Vocational Success

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Unit 6: Health

Lesson 2: Nutrition

OBJECTIVES

  1. Identify the major dietary guidelines from the Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion.

  2. Identify the benefits of maintaining a well-balanced diet.

MATERIALS NEEDED
Daily Food Intake recording form

Information on the Food Guide Pyramid (Appendix E)

marker board or something to write on

food labels from various foods (candy bars, chips, box of spaghetti, box of rice, etc.)

SUPPLEMENTAL RESOURCES
An abundance of resources on nutrition can be obtained at bookstores, in libraries, on television, and on the Internet. Trainers are encouraged to seek out any additional resources to provide further instruction.

INSTRUCTIONAL FORMAT
This lesson will provide information on how to eat properly. There will be no information on dieting, per se. Rather, eating properly should be taught in the context of being healthy and how that improved health is important for job performance. Information from the lesson titled "Fitness" and providing information on reducing calories in this lesson should give people enough information on losing weight. The information on the Food Guide Pyramid is from the Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, which is an agency within the United States Department of Agriculture.

  1. Meet with the members of the class for a short introductory session. During this meeting, the trainer should introduce the lesson and instruct the students that they should keep track of the food and beverages they consume each day for a week. Give them the recording form that is provided. For students who have difficulty writing, instruct them to have someone help them record what they eat. If this assignment is too difficult for most of the class members, skip this step and adjust the lesson accordingly.

  2. Using the information contained in the materials on the Food Guide Pyramid, provide instruction on how to maintain a balanced diet. Use visual aids as needed. Discuss each of the six different food groups, what foods are in each group, and about how much they should have from each group each day. Providing information on the exact amount of servings that are recommended may get too complex for many students, so try to provide general guidelines. For example, "it is important that you eat more servings from the bread group than the meat group. Try to eat a few fruits and vegetables each day and very little fat or sugar."

  3. Discuss calorie intake. Calories are the fuel that the body needs to burn to provide energy. Energy allows us to be more productive, alert, and think better. If people are getting their "energy" from sugar, nicotine, and caffeine, they should be informed that this provides short-term "energy" which requires continued consumption of these products to keep that false sense of energy. In order to have "good energy," a person needs to consume healthy calories. This is accomplished by eating 2,000-3,000 healthy calories throughout the day. People should eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner with a few healthy snacks in between.

    Counting calories can be complex and tedious, so use the information provided to teach some basic guidelines. People get their calories from three basic sources: carbohydrates, protein, and fats. There is much debate about what percentage of a person's daily intake should come from each source of calories. Most guidelines suggest that 50-60 percent of your calories should come from carbohydrates (breads, grain, fruits and vegetables) and the other 40-50 percent should come from protein (cheese, meat, milk) and fat(butter, lard, oil). Instruct students that a person gets more energy when she burns calories from carbohydrates and protein. Yet, fat contains twice as many calories per gram as the other two. By eating a greater percentage of carbohydrates and protein, the person gets more energy from fewer calories.

    Remind students that they still need to be concerned with calories. If you consume 3,000 healthy calories a day and only burn 2,500 calories, you are still going to gain weight. Nevertheless, use the following example to stress that eating properly allows a person to consume more food and still be healthy. If a person starts the day with a sausage biscuit with egg at a local fast food place, he has just consumed more than a fourth of the recommended calories (560) and over half the recommended fat (35 grams). This means that he has used up quite a bit of his daily allowance on a little, probably unsatisfying breakfast. A bowl of breakfast food, banana, and glass of juice would provide the person more energy from fewer calories and almost no fat. This would allow the person to put a little extra mayonnaise or cheese on his sandwich at lunch and still meet his daily requirement of calories and fat. It is important to stress balance. Having a Big MacŪ every once in a while is not going to be a big deal. The idea is to get students to adopt a lifestyle that includes a well-balanced diet most of the time.

  4. Discuss that a well-balanced diet also is important for other health concerns. When it comes to nutrition, people generally think only about body weight. However, a person who is thin and eating a lot of fatty foods is putting himself at risk of having health problems such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol, which can lead to heart attacks. Some people have medical conditions, such as diabetes, that require them to follow a strict diet. It is important to stress the importance of following a doctor's recommended diet. When a person does not do that, he puts himself at risk for serious health problems. Remind people that it is hard to be successful at work when they are using many sick days due to illness that can be prevented by a proper diet.

  5. In order to review some of the concepts discussed, review the nutritional contents of different food products. This will also provide training on how to read food labels. Some important figures to look at include the serving size, number of calories from fat compared to the total calories, and percentage of the daily allowance from fat, cholesterol, sodium, carbohydrates, and protein. A healthy food should have a small percentage of its calories from fat, little to no saturated fat, cholesterol, and sodium. Try to find foods that contribute more than 25 percent of the daily recommended allowance of fat, cholesterol, or sodium in one serving. These foods will help illustrate that sometimes eating a small amount of tasty food can put a huge dent into the total amount of nutrients a person should eat each day. Point out serving sizes. The amount of calories in a bag of chips might be reasonable based on its serving size. However, if the serving size is three chips, it only takes a few handfuls before the amount of calories is unreasonable.

  6. For those students who completed a daily food intake form, have them review their information and discuss. Are they eating a healthy diet? What can they do to improve the balance of their diet? Have them look at one meal that was particularly unhealthy and see if they come up with an alternative, more healthy meal.

SIGNS OF GENERALIZATION
Many people understand what makes up a healthy diet, but they choose to indulge in foods that tend to be unhealthy. The students will have the knowledge to adopt a healthy diet if they choose. If a student does choose to eat more sensibly, she seeks out assistance or does it on her own.

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