Healthy Living Project
The purpose of the Healthy Living Project was for a group of 10th graders to create and plan an event that helped educate some of the students at DRSS in an aspect of healthy living. The events could focus on either exercise or healthy eating. The goal of the project was to improve the health of the students in our school.
In order to start creating this event, we went through a planning process. Part of this planning was presenting our event to our teachers and justifying why our event was beneficial. This required a lot of research into what foods the students were eating, and how they effected the students’ health. In addition to presenting, we had to write a proposal, which included biology and wellness content to justify our event, and create a budget for our event. We also had to create writing materials that would be used to advertise the event, materials that would be used in the event, and handout materials.
For our Healthy Living Event we gave 6th graders three healthy dishes to implement into their diet. Each of the dishes was high in a food group that we found the students to be lacking in. These food groups were vegetables, fruits, and whole grains. We made Confetti Salad to address the lack of vegetables, Fruit Salad to address the lack of fruit, and Penne Pasta to address the lack of whole grains in the students' diets. In addition to making samples of these dishes, we also made flyers which included information such as the price per serving, how to make the dish, and nutritional information about each dish. To the right are the PDF versions of the flyers we created (materials to be used in the event and taken home). Before giving samples to the 6th graders, we spoke briefly with them about how each meal would improve their health.
Through this project I learned a lot of things in biology, wellness, and language arts. In biology, I learned a lot about lipids. Lipids are wax like substances which make up unsaturated fat, saturated fat, trans fat, phospholipids, and cholesterol. Unsaturated fat is good for you, because it helps lower the risk of heart disease. Saturated and trans fat is bad for you, because it increases your risk for heart disease as well as promotes other problems in your body. There are two types of cholesterol, HDL (good cholesterol) and LDL (bad cholesterol). LDL can block your arteries, causing heart disease. HDL helps remove LDL from your body, helping prevent heart disease. In wellness, I learned how eating simple carbohydrates can cause Type 2 diabetes. When you eat lots of simple sugars, your body creates lots of insulin to break down the sugar. This strains the pancreas, leading to insulin resistance, and eventually Type 2 diabetes. In language arts, I learned how to improve my writing technique and process. I learned how to progress from a skeleton outline, to a descriptive outline, to a paper. This helped me know that my content was correct.
This project made me start thinking about what I’m eating. Because I now understand what those things do in my body, I am trying to eat better and make healthier choices when eating. All the research in biology gave me a great understanding of how cells work in the body, make energy, and how foods affect the cells. This research helped me to be better prepared to teach others about healthy foods as well as help improve my own health. This research also helped me help other people. If the 6th graders eat these dishes, they will start putting nutrients into their body that they weren't getting enough of before this project. For example, by eating any of these dishes you are putting fiber into your body. Fiber blocks the absorption of cholesterol, lowering your risk of heart disease. This is how my group and I hope to help the 6th graders and their families.
My biggest challenge in this project was working with my group. Originally, it was only me and one other person and myself. This person didn’t seem to be working very hard and seemed to be content to let me do most of the work. This made the beginning of the project very difficult for me. I overcame this challenge by asking my teachers for help. Through being calm and not getting upset, I was able to communicate my concerns and my teachers helped me respond appropriately. They combined my group with another group. The other people combined with my group turned out very well, and our event was successful.
In this project, my group and I had to use inquiry a lot. In order to know what we were talking about, we had to research healthy eating. This research helped us understand what we were doing and what/who we were dealing with. In this project we analyzed the food diaries of students to understand what they were eating. This helped us better understand who we were working with. We also researched and learned about carbohydrates, proteins, and lipids. This project helped improve my research skills in finding information and relating it to what I am wanting to focus on. I was really interested in how eating certain foods can increase your risk for certain diseases. For example, why eating lots of simple sugars such as candy can increase your risk of Type 2 Diabetes. I learned through my research that your body creates insulin to digest the sugar. When you eat a lot of simple sugars, your body creates a lot of insulin to break down all the sugar. This mass production of insulin strains the pancreas and can lead to insulin resistance, which helps cause Type 2 Diabetes.
Overall, I enjoyed this project. I learned a lot about how our bodies interact with food as well as a few practical real world skills.