“We feel that one of the most important learning tools we can provide to the young children we serve is how to make healthier eating choices,” said Freda Aughenbaugh, nutrition educator, Metz & Associates, Ltd. at Riverview Elementary School. “Nutrition education is so important, because studies show that obesity levels in school-age children are alarmingly high and that healthy eating habits can contribute to higher rates of academic success in children.”

Aughenbaugh and the Metz team at Riverview focus on making healthier eating and education an adventure for the students they serve. With lessons on every topic from the food pyramid and portion distortion to the proper way to wash hands, students develop healthy habits that can last a lifetime.

Kindergarteners at Riverview get to take part in a veggie party at the end of each nutrition class, where they are encouraged to taste a vegetable they have not previously tried. “We also have elementary food advisory council meetings where students have a chance to vote their likes, dislikes, and also help compose their own menu, which we use in the rotation the following month,” Aughenbaugh said. “While their chosen lunch menus are more traditional, we do like to give them input in to what they are eating.”

A very popular nutrition education class provided by Metz & Associations to the young students is “Portion Distortion,” where they are shown examples of how portion sizes have increased over the past 20 years. The students are very surprised by what they learn from examples including soda, fast food French fries and burgers and spaghetti, when portions are compared and calorie count explained. Kindergarten students learn the difference between portion size and serving size and also how to determine proper portion size, using easy to understand comparisons, such as a deck of cards for meat and a dice for cheese. They learn how to read and understand a food label and also what to look for on various food labels.

“Eat This, Not That, a book on the NY Times best seller list, is a great tool to show the students some actual comparisons of all types of foods, and is always a popular part of the lesson plan,” Aughenbaugh said. “The children are very ‘grossed out’ with some of the facts they learn, such as the number of teaspoons of sugar in a can of soda, which is 13, and that a large 44 oz soda has a whopping 48 teaspoons of sugar. It is quite dramatic, when we actually measure out the sugar right in from of them, and certainly drives home the point we are trying to make.”

The Metz team also incorporates a lesson on teenage and childhood obesity with a discussion on why it has become so prevalent and the impact of increasingly larger portions on the obesity problem. In conjunction with the nutrition lessons, students at Riverview are able to choose from a large selection of fresh fruits and vegetables at lunch each day, as well as other healthy lunch and snack items, which helps them to meet their recommended daily consumption of these items.

The Metz team knows that teaching children healthy eating can be relatively easy if you start when they are young. It begins by exposing them to a wide variety of healthy foods, letting them know the benefits of the different foods they are eating, and monitoring their diets and food intake while they are young. The Metz staff has discovered that turning healthy eating and a healthy lifestyle into an adventure, through the use of games and other fun and interactive learning tools, as well as encouraging physical activity, leads to eager participation on the part of young students. “Our goal is to help these students establish and maintain healthy eating patterns and a physically active life,” Aughenbaugh said. “During this upcoming school year, we will continue to focus on providing a wide variety of healthy meal choices, and demonstrate innovation and creativity in our lesson plans, to help these students discover the fun side of healthy eating.”

Metz & Associates, Ltd., a premier food service company for the Northeast United States, provides dining and environmental management to clients such as hospitals, assisted living & long-term care facilities, school districts and independent schools, colleges and universities and corporate offices. For more information on Metz & Associates, Ltd., visit our website at www.metzltd.com or call 570.675.8100.