Students will: explore their food ‘influencers’, discuss supplement use, and plan a meal for a sports team. Curriculum focus: PE, PSE, PSHE, PD&MU, health and wellbeing and food technology. This resource is part of the Think Real campaign.
Time required: approx. 60 minutes and cooking time.
Equipment: team activity sheets from the presentation: food scenarios and cards, food influencers, meal planner and meal challenge cards, fridge checklist (to take home) and pledge sheet; ingredients and cooking facilities (if preparing meals on-site).
Place the five scenarios and the ‘save it for another time’ cards around the space.
Hand each student a ‘Choose a fuel’ activity sheet.
Give students a time limit (e.g. 3 minutes) to walk / run and allocate their foods to the best-match scenarios, writing the scenario number next to the chosen foods within a given time. Explain that they might feel some of the foods are not well-suited to any scenario, in which case they should ‘save it for another time’.
Briefly discuss their decisions: why did they choose those foods for that scenario?
Alternative: play as a relay in teams of five, with one team member selecting the foods for each different scenario, or cut out the foods to use as activity cards, with students selecting a food one at a time and walking/ running to place it on the best scenario or ‘save it for another time’ at the team station. Make it competitive by colour-coding the cards to see which team makes the most ‘healthy’ choices.
Working individually or in pairs, ask the students to complete the food influencer matrix, identifying the ‘supports’ and ‘limits’ that influence their food choices.
Ask the students to identify the most strongest limiting influencer in their lives and work with a partner to turn find a way to turn this limit into a positive boost.
Working in groups, ask the students to plan and prepare a meal for their sports team.
For an additional challenge, give each group a ‘team update’ card after 5–10 minutes of planning. These cards should promote creative thinking, and help students understand that you can still produce a healthy meal in various situations and to meet various needs.
Allow the students to make the meals. Where appropriate, encourage the students to shop for the ingredients so they learn to make healthy food choices within a budget.
Afterwards, discuss what they learned about nutrition for sport and identify what went well regarding their team meals and potential improvements.
Use the slide to reinforce and summarise the key learnings about nutrition in life and sport. Emphasise the message of ‘food first’ – in sport and life.
Ask the students to create their personal nutrition pledge, followed by a group discussion to identify team goals and ways to spread healthy nutrition ideas in the school/sports club.
Encourage the students to take the fridge checklist home and post it in the kitchen to help them to make healthy food choices on a daily basis.