Year 8s love Food...

Learning about healthy eating

This semester in Food Studies we have been learning about how what we eat can affect our future. For example, if you are excessively eating foods with high amounts of sugar this could lead to diabetes.

We all picked a lifestyle-related disease and started to investigate what foods could possibly cause and prevent this.

I picked cardiovascular disease, this is a disease that affects your heart and arteries. It is commonly caused by foods with high contents of sugar, salt or fat. You develop blood clots and clogged arteries that lead to chest pains, heart attacks and strokes.

However, there are many foods that can prevent this such as nuts, dark chocolate (with high cocoa content), oily fish, legumes, spinach, berries and garlic.

We then designed a lunch box that contained beneficial foods for someone suffering from our chosen disease, while referring to the Australian guidelines for healthy eating to make sure we had food from every food group and healthy proportions.

My lunch box contained healthy walnut brownies, mixed berries, whole grain and seed crackers, mixed nuts and a spinach, feta and legumes salad. The brownie has high contents of cocoa and nuts, the mixed nuts and berries were all fresh and natural and the salad contained only fresh ingredients, legumes and spinach. We also brought your own container to be environmentally friendly.

We will then look back at our work and reflect on what we have created.

Mia I, 8D

Doing the lunch box has really made me more aware of the health issues and how what we eat can affect us later in life. I decided to explore cardiovascular disease. We researched and learned the effects of this disease in our daily lives. The task then required me to make a suitable lunchbox. I cooked tuna falafels because these are high source of protein. I included homemade toasted granola with yoghurt and berries. I also prepared a green salad with halloumi and orange juice. The Australian Guidelines to Healthy Eating suggest that you have a colourful diet and include all the 5 food groups so I have a protein, fruit and vegetables my lunch box. The ingredients are fresh and delicious. I used oranges because the juice helps the blood vessels work to prevent the risk of heart disease. The fatty acids in tuna help the bloodstreams to run smoothly and avoid an impact on the heart. The fruit and veggies were following the guidelines for our daily intake. Also part of the task was to be mindful of packaging so I brought in my own lunchbox.

Sophie H, 8D

Homemade is best

8H Focus on Food made homemade chicken noodle soup and compared their creations with instant noodles through a sensory analysis. We also discussed which one was more healthy and why by discussing the difference in ingredients and additives.  It was great that most students preferred their own cooking to the instant option! Keep up the good work, 8H.