Nutrition education is a great way to encourage healthy eating, to build positive and strong eating habits, and to help decrease the rise of obesity in the United States. A great way to get this message across is in the classroom. However, nutrition education programs will not be successful unless they have a solid foundation and plan behind them. Having a unique and fun curriculum is a perfect way to spread this knowledge, while keeping the population interested and wanting to learn more. The Leafy Green Council does just this, and has been very successful so far.
The leafy Green Council is a voluntary organization of more than 120 growers, shippers, and suppliers nationwide. It was founded in Chicago by Robert Strube Sr, President of Strube Celery and Vegetable Company, in 1974, with the goal of expanding market, educating consumers, representing member’s interests, and facilitating networking. In order to help spread the awareness of leafy greens, they provide lesson plans to help grade school teachers explain the nutritional value of the vegetables.
The lesson plans provide education materials on leafy greens mainly for students in the third through fifth grade. The lesson plans vary in many different subjects such as language arts, math, science, and social studies. Each lesson plan allows the students to have a hands on approach to learning about new vegetables and healthy eating in general, and has the goal of achieving the following objectives:
1.) Understanding the nutritious benefits of cruciferous vegetables
2.) Understanding cancer fighting elements in cruciferous vegetables
3.) Encouraging the increase of leafy greens at home
Teachers can incorporate the leafy green lesson plans into their classroom studies by downloading the lesson plans and obtaining free training cards and other various learning materials for the classroom. The students are led through the core of the curriculum by the “Cruciferous Crusaders”. The Cruciferous Crusaders are a five member baseball team of dinosaurs, including Cabbagesarus, Broccadactyl, Lettucerator, Kal-O-Dan, and Spinacraptor. Through different activities, the Cruciferous Crusaders help explain and introduce new vegetables that are good for you and that can taste great. Some of these activities include a parent lunch, picture finding, mystery vegetable day, and a tour of a leafy green vegetable farm. Teachers can also cut news article clips with their students, and create a bulletin board for the classroom.
Overall, this program would be very beneficial for elementary and middle school teachers to utilize, and a great way for students to learn about many new types of leafy greens, that they may have never known about or were afraid to try. This program is also great for a school budget because it is absolutely free. The costs would only be for misallaneous items to go along with some lessons, and setting part of your day toward leafy green education. The lessons that the Leafy Greens Council offers, also does a great job with keeping students interested with the use of dinosaur baseball players and their unique and clever names. I strongly recommended this program for anyone interested in learning about the importance of leafy greens!
Ashley Hassett