 LET’S GET FRUITY AT SCHOOL
At the start of September this year, Australian dietitian, Karen Inge, this assisted Nutrition Australia launch an exciting new Australia -wide primary schools’ program that promotes fruit and water time in class.
The program, Let’s Get Fruity, sets out to encourage good nutritional habits among the youngsters by having an organised fruit and water time during classroom activities.
Let’s Get Fruity is designed by Nutrition Australia with the support of the kiwifruit Industry of New Zealand. It comprises fun classroom activities and support material, all of which promotes the importance of fruit and water consumption.
Consultant dietitian, Karen Inge is pleased to be involved with the Let’s Get Fruity program. With increasing concerns about childhood obesity in Australia, fruit offers children a great low kilo joule, nutritious snack. The variety of bright rich colours as well as flavour adds to kids’ enjoyment of fruit and its nutritional value¹.
“And by making eating fruit fun, we encourage children to choose healthier foods and hopefully lay the foundations for their future health and wellbeing. As children consume more than a third of their daily food intake at school, it is an excellent setting to establish healthy eating patterns and not just via the school canteen as this facility is not accessed by every child,” says Karen.
Not only are there significant health gains in eating more fruit, there are also cost savings. It has been estimated that if all Australians increased their fruit or vegetable consumption by one serve a day, $180 million would be saved in health care costs nationally. 2.
For more information contact
Jodi Phillips
National Executive Officer
Nutrition Australia
0412 558 352
eonational@nutritionaustralia.org
References:
- Nanney M.S. et al, The Journal of the American Dietetic Association (JADA), March 2004
- Australian Chronic Disease Prevention Alliance “Chronic Illness Australia’s Health Challenge: the Economic Case for Physical Activity and Nutrition in the prevention of Chronic Disease.” 2004
The Let’s Get Fruity Resources include:
- A free fruity poster for the class room (plus cost of postage and handling) ,
- A supportive flyer on the benefits of “Lets Get Fruity”
- Posters and flyers can be obtained from the Nutrtion Australia office in your state.
- Below are suggestions for teachers to link fruit and water time to the curriculum.
- Links to fun activities for children: http://www.keta.co.nz/kiwi_kids.php
Information for teachers to support “Let’s Get Fruity”
Quick Class Quiz:
True or False?
Fruit is a good snack to munch on everyday?
True
Fruit is an “everyday food”?
True
Activities to run in class:
- Before starting fruit time ask the children to write down what fruit they eat in a day and how this makes them feel? Conduct this at regular intervals for the students own personal observations.
- Utilise the “in season table” on the Lets Get Fruity Flyer to run class activities:
- Use the snack time fruit or bring in a bowl of fruit to conduct activities in class relevant to various components of the curriculum:
Here are some suggestions:
Health and Physical education:
- Using fruits in season investigate the health benefits of the fruit.
- Hold a class debate (for older students) or class discussion (for younger students) on the benefits of snacking. Possible debate topics: Snacking on fruit helps you live longer”: Fruit is a healthier snack than chips”
- Bring in a range of different snacks including processed and fresh snacks to the classroom and ask the children to rank them in terms of healthy choices. For example, you could compare the fibre and sugar content of fresh fruit, dried fruit, fruit juice and fruit bars.
Studies of society and environment
- Organise and excursion to a local fruit grower or orchard to see how the fruit gets from “farm to table” or visit your local green grocer to investigate the different varieties of fruit available. Conduct these visits during different seasons.
- .Explore the different seasons and areas that fruit are grown in throughout Australia
- Investigate Australian native fruits and how they are adapted to the climate and environment.
- Ask the children to invent new ways to water fruit trees with the aim of saving water.
- Utilise the different cultures within the class to discuss different ways of preparing and eating fruit in different cultures including fruit used and eaten for special occasions and celebrations.
- Conduct taste testing culturally diverse fruits such as Lychees.
English
- Conduct spelling games with the fruit as the subject.
- Ask the children to make up a fictional story about a fruit they recently ate. Ask them to include three unusual true facts about the fruit in the story. Students may read the story to the class and ask the class to guess the true facts.
- Conduct a play using fruit characters
- Get the class to write a letter to local fruit growers telling them about the Fruit Time at their school and asking for donations of fruit to sell at canteen to raise money for e.g. new sports equipment.
Science
- Look at the different components that make up fruit
- Explore the different tastes of fruits. Look at sweet and sour fruits and the reasons why they are like that.
- Try blind tastings let student guess what the fruit is.
- Taste testing of the different varieties of apples is a suggestion
- Look at different forms of fruits and why they are made that way. For example look at the way that various fruits carry their seeds.
- Older students could look at reactions like browning reactions and how acidity can limit that
- Older students could investigate the research on what nutrient loss occurs in cooking fruit.
- Explore different methods of cooking with fruit for example, dehydrating and stewing
- Design and cook a fruit recipe.
Maths:
Conduct a class survey of fruit eaten and construct a graph. The graph could classify the different types or colours of fruits eaten or even a tally of class fruit consumption over the week or month. This is a good activity to help evaluate the effect of Fruit Time.
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