Audience: Students ages 9-12 years

General program objective: Participants will reduce overall daily sugar intake.

Specific program objective: Participants will identify 24g as the daily recommendation for added sugar.

Behavior change strategy: Self-Efficacy

Educational activities:

• Elicit—have students select a food product with a nutrition facts label. Ask the students to identify the nutrition facts label and the amount of added sugar (from lesson Sugar 01: Nutrition Facts Label)
• Explain—play the provided video for the students.
• Expand—have the students descern if their food products are above or below the recommended daily amount.
• Exit—have the students write an action plan for sugar intake.

Length of time to complete: 10-15 minutes, depending on length and depth of conversation.

Materials Required:

• Food packaging with nutrition facts labels (maybe source from the home, or provided as printouts supplied to the students by the instructor)
• Multi-media display (e.g. computer monitor, projector, or SmartScreen)
• Access to the internet and YouTube

Procedure:

• Have the students observe their food package and identify the amount of added sugar.
• Ask the students to make a prediction about the amount of added sugar:
  1. Who thinks their food has (more/less) sugar than you should eat in a day?
  2. What do you think about the amount of added sugar in your food?
• Introduce the short-form video and play for the students.
• Ask the students to compare their food’s added sugar to the recommended amount of 24g per day.
  1. Who remembers the magic number?
  2. Stand up or raise hands if your food has (more/less) than 24g of added sugar.
• Allow the children to compare quantities in small groups:
  1. If your food has more than 24g of added sugar, how many day’s worth of sugar is there?
  2. If your food is under 24g of added sugar, how much could you eat in a day (this will lead into the next lesson: Sugar 03—Label Numbers)
• Have the students write a plan for how much sugar they want to eat each day during the next week.

Further enrichment:

Have the students select a favorite food item either online or from home, and have them list the amounts of total sugar and added sugar, then write about the sources of sugar in the food and how much is okay to eat in a day.