Start your food-label lesson plan with a discussion of nutrition and the function of food labels. Explain basic concepts of nutrition in your lecture, including the FDA’s general guidelines for food consumption and why you need certain types of foods in certain amounts to keep your body functioning well. Then delve into an explanation of food labels. Explain to your students why food labels exist on most packaged foods and what kind of information they portray. Emphasize the importance of reading food labels in order to know exactly what you are putting into your body before you eat.
Put up a sample food label on your projector or whiteboard, or hand out copies of the food label to each student. As a class, go over the information contained on the label. Ask your students pointed questions about the contents of the label. For example, ask for a volunteer to tell you where to find the information on vitamins. Ask for another volunteer to tell you what percentage of the FDA recommendation for daily caloric intake is provided by the food in question. Since some members of the class may not understand how to read the label as quickly as others, briefly explain where to find the information after each question.
Separate your students into small groups and hand out several sample food labels to each group. Ask your students to work together to locate various information on each food label. For more advanced classes, have your students formulate answers about the general nutritional value of the food portrayed by the sample label, or ask them to fit the food into the FDA food pyramid based on its nutritional values. Another way to challenge older students is to ask them to multiply the calories and other nutritional information by more than one serving of food; for example, for a label that proclaims to contain 2.5 servings, have students calculate the nutritional value inherent in the entire package based on the given values per serving size.
Take the last few minutes to review your lesson. Bring your students back together as a group and briefly summarize the new concepts you taught them. Remind students of the importance of reading food labels and taking care of their bodies through proper nutrition. If you have extra time at the end of class, start a short discussion by asking students to volunteer information about what they learned and how they can apply it in their own lives.