Nutrition education comes in many shapes and sizes, with endless handouts, flyers, games, and worksheets to choose from. This is beneficial to educators and clients alike, because new material can provide a different outlook or way to explain common nutritional guidelines. One type of learning is not universal to every individual, and educators are always looking for ways to reach everyone. Just like it’s so important to have variety in our diets, it’s important to have variety in the form and content of materials.
The material that I chose as a nutrition education example is entitled Activity: Balancing your meals. This is a printout worksheet that allows individuals—whoever they may be—to fill in blank spaces to complete the activity. The theme of this worksheet is adding more fruits and vegetables into a balanced diet, which is one of the most stressed nutritional guidelines. There are pictures of breakfast foods, snacks, and dinners that are simple and feasible to make, but are still nutritious. The pictures only show a protein and a carbohydrate pair, and the idea is to write down a fruit or vegetable that you could add to create a balanced meal or snack.
The most interesting part of this material was that it really shows individuals how many choices they have when it comes to adding more fruits and vegetables, and that they can choose which they want. I think a lot of people are overwhelmed with trying to eat more vegetables, but this is an easy way to remind yourself to add a serving to every meal or snack. I was a little surprised that this handout didn’t contain any examples of types of fruits or vegetables to choose from. There are so many fruits and vegetables that are novelties in common diets simply because people are unaware that they even exist. I think if they provided some samples of less common fruits and vegetables that it would make individuals more inclined to add more variety to their choices.
As a nutrition educator, I feel that I could use this worksheet in various ways. I really like that it’s simple enough for middle and high school kids to understand, but can be made more complex with each individual’s fruit and vegetable choices. Trying to add more fruits and vegetables to our diets is such a straightforward message, and it can be hard to implement it in different ways as to keep it relevant and interesting. This would be a great tool in community and class settings to hand out to participants. That way, they could fill it out with help if needed, and take it home to use as a reminder. Since this worksheet isn’t age specific, I could see it working from middle school aged kids all the way to adults. For overweight of obese adults, this could be a good beginning tool to help them see what a balanced meal could look like. It could also help them lose weight because of the fruits and vegetables they would be eating in place of the probable energy dense foods normally eaten.