Food & Nutrition School Projects

With a growing obesity epidemic and increasing rates of childhood diabetes, more and more schools are incorporating nutritional education and food awareness into their programming. Kids today need to develop nutritional literacy to become strong, healthy adults. Children generally love to talk about food, so it shouldn't be hard to get their attention with a creative project depicting a certain angle of food and nutrition.

Nutrition Across Cultures

Each culture has its own norm when it comes to food and nutrition.

Compare the typical foods and overall nutrition of different countries. Create a Food Map, displaying the typical foods of every region transposed over an image of the world. Or focus on one particular culture's cuisine and introduce it to your class. Even within the United States, staple foods can change dramatically by region and ethnic group.

Cooking Project

Show off your knowledge of food combinations by preparing a tasty meal.

Whip up a tasty meal for your class. Bonus points if you can prepare the meal in front of your class. Describe the different components of the meal as you add them. Narrate your actions as you go through the preparation, cooking and serving.

Evolution of the Food Guide Pyramid

Explore the evolution of the food guide pyramid from its conception to present day. Create a three-dimensional, four-sided pyramid out of the material of your choice. Each side will display a different food guide pyramid, moving chronologically through the decades.

Nutritional Deficiencies

Many people are deficient in certain nutrients without knowing it.

Explore different nutritional deficiencies, like anemia, B-12, Vitamin D, etc. Show signs and symptoms of various nutritional deficiencies, and also common means to reverse their trends.

Evolution of the American Kitchen

The kitchen has changed dramatically since the birth of our nation.

Use illustrations, photographs or drawings to depict the transformation of the American kitchen, from colonial times to the present. Focus on the symbol of the kitchen as the hearth of the American household.

Evolution of the American Diet

Create a timeline, demonstrating the evolution of the Standard American Diet (SAD) from colonization to the present day (you can include the Native American diet, too.) Describe how our patterns of cooking and consumption, as well as nutritional values, were affected by farming technologies, trade and modern conveniences, like the refrigerator and microwave.

Evolution of the Human Diet

The human diet has come a long way from the caveman days.

Create a timeline, illustrating the evolution of the human diet from our earliest stages to the present day. Take into consideration the discovery of fire, the onset of farming technologies, and the emergence of factory farms.

Women's Nutrition

Women need different nutrients than men at various stages of development

Highlight women's nutritional needs and how they differ from a man's. Discuss nutritional needs through puberty, pregnancy, lactation, menopause and old age.

Not-So-Great Advice

Compile a list of quack nutritional advice from the annals of history that have since been proved (sometimes emphatically) wrong. Include magazine cutouts of old ads for foods once believed beneficial to the human diet.

Nutritional Needs Throughout Our Lives

Describe the macronutrients and micronutrients that are most needed by the human body throughout every stage of its development, from birth to old age, and which foods are rich in those nutrients. You can draw people of various ages on sheets of a flip chart, and drawing or pasting images of special nutrient-rich foods in the belly of the person. As you flip through the pages, the person gets progressively older and the food and nutrient needs for the person change.