Audience: Students ages 9-12 years

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

Specific program objective: Participants will identify food serving sizes on the nutrition facts label.

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 amount of added sugar (from lesson Sugar 02: Daily Recommendation)
• Explain—play the provided video for the students.
• Expand—have the students analyze the serving size and serving quantity on the package.
• Exit—have the students write a reflection on the lesson.

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 supplies to the students by the instructor)
• Multi-media display (e.g. computer monitor, projector, or SmartScreen)
• Access to the internet and YouTube
• Optional: measuring cups and/or food scales

Procedure:

• Have the students observe their food package and identify the amount of added sugar.
• Ask the students to analyze the rest of the nutrition facts label for serving size and serving quantity:
  1. Who sees more than one serving on their food label?
  2. How many servings are on your label?
  3. How does that serving size compare to how much you would normally eat?
• Introduce the short-form video and play for the students.
• Ask the students to add up the total amount of added sugar in the package (e.g. if there are 2 servings of 10g of sugar it would be 20g of total added sugar in that package).
• Allow the children to compare quantities in small groups:
  1. Whose food has the (most/least) servings?
  2. Whose food has the (most/least) amount of total added sugar?
  3. Add up all your added sugar in the total package, what do you get?
  4. Add up all your added sugars in all your packages and what team has the (most/least) amount?
• Have the students write a reflection on how much sugar is recommended in a day and how much is in a food they like, or the food observed during the lesson.

Further enrichment:

Have the students measure out one serving of their food either by volume (measuring cups) or weight (food scale). Have them write about their thoughts on how much food that is and compare it to how much they would normally eat in a day.