… About Health and the Food Guide Pyramid

Monday primer

The food guide pyramid is a visual guide to good nutrition.

The bottom, or widest part, of the pyramid consists of foods containing a lot of energy, such as breads, cereal, rice and pasta. The nutrition experts who designed the pyramid suggest that you eat more servings of these as part of a healthy diet.

Also near the bottom are the vegetable and fruit groups; many daily servings from this group also are important.

Higher on the pyramid are the milk, yogurt and cheese group and the protein group. These foods still are important for good health, but you don’t need to eat as many servings.

At the top of the pyramid is the fats, oils and sweets groups. Your body should have smaller amounts of these.

Nutrition experts are planning to revise the pyramid this year.

Figure it out

Following are activities for students, teachers and parents:

1. Go to http://kidshealth.org/parent/nutrition_f it/nutrition/ pyramid.html for information on the food guide pyramid. Using advertisements from the newspaper, buy healthy food for a well- balanced meal.

2. Using the Friday paper, go to the school lunch menus in the North of the River or South of the River sections, inside the Metro section. Pick a school system and figure out on which day of the week the most well-balanced meal will be served. (NOTE: Readers outside the Richmond area do not receive these sections in their Times-Dispatch.)

3. On Wednesday, go to the Balance section and pick out a healthy recipe to make for your family. An adult may help you make it.

4. Go through the newspaper and find an article pertaining to health — such as smoking, nutrition, weight, medicine, etc. Make a poster for the issue or product you have read about. (For example: For an article on smoking being banned in public places, make a no- smoking poster.)

5. In the Balance section, find an article on exercise and read it. If possible, try the exercise yourself.

6. After reading a few articles on health throughout the week, create a one-minute persuasive commercial about why good health is important. Include facts and interesting things you have read in the article. Remember to be persuasive!

On the Internet

For more on nutrition and the food guide pyramid, go to:

*http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/Fpyr/pyramid.html

*http://nutrition.about.com/

*http://www.exhibits.pacsci.org/nutrition/

This feature about topics in the news appears every Monday.

TEACHERS AND PARENTS: We’d like to hear how you are using “You Need to Know Stuff” with your children and share your ideas and activities with others. Please e-mail us at jartur@timesdispatch.com