Designing a community health lesson plan on obesity and nutrition education

Obesity Education

Community healthy living lesson plan

Main concepts

The community members will come to know what constitutes healthy and unhealthy snacks. They will also figure out why many people are addicted to unhealthy snacks that often lead to obesity and what alternatives could be introduced in their homes in place of the unhealthy snacks.

To be able to sort out the unhealthy snacks from the unhealthy ones as well as telling why they are considered unhealthy.

To be able to find alternatives to the unhealthy snacks as a group or community members.

Key Terms

Calories: the unit used to measure the value that the food holds in terms of the energy.

Nutrition: the valuable nutrients that the body gets.

Healthy living: the habit of eating the right foods within the community

Junk food: foods high in fats, calories, sugar and sodium yet very low in nutritional value.

Obesity: overweight or too fat for comfort of the individual.

Time schedule

One hour educational sitting of the community members who will be grouped in groups of 40 per session and in line with the age brackets. This will ensure the very elderly members of the society are not bunched together with the 10-year-olds.

Materials

Video of "Obesity & Fast Food" from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IUQoh_wuMQ

Pens and papers

Internet access

Lesson Plan

1. Watch the "Obesity & Fast Food" video with the community members and the introduce the topic of obesity to the class and discuss together with them why many Americans are obese.

2. Allow the community members to watch the video keenly and after that try to counter check if they got a tip on what junk foods are and what healthy foods are from the video. Gauge if the students have picked the bad effects of the junk foods as expressed in the video and their particular danger to the body.

3. Ask the group to brainstorm more of the junk foods that were not mentioned in the brief video watched in class. Now divide the group into two groups and allocate them equal number of the junk foods they mentioned hitherto. Ask the two groups to come up with reasons why the junk foods are so irresistible to them in the daily diet. Note down the reasons which may include the texture, taste, fame, trend coolness, ease of acquisition and more reasons.

4. Ask group at this stage to strive and come up with alternative foods that are healthy foods without health risks yet were not mentioned in the video played in class. Try to have them keep in mind that there are alternative healthy foods that can taste equally nice and crunchy yet not present health risks. Let the group members come up with creative swaps for the unhealthy foods and numerate as many as possible.

5. The two teams in the class will here present their alternative healthy foods to the rest of the groups and will use available ingredients from the community which will make it more local and reachable and practical to many of the community members. For each healthy food alternative, have the entire lot try to equate the junk food that it is replacing and give the reasons why. This is geared towards making the community members that with the elimination of the junk foods that are unhealthy, there can never be shortage or compromise of taste and style.

6. Let the class now analyze the entire exercise and see the extent to which the replacement of the junk foods with healthy foods succeeded. As them to critically see and note which swaps were the best and ideal and if there are alternatives that actually surpassed the original junk foods that they were to replace.

Assessment

Ask the group to put down a summary of their investigations and what they have learnt. Ask each person to take ten minutes to write down what their conclusion and way forward is regarding the healthy eating habits and obesity.

Extension

Time now to introduce a little bit of politics into the discussion. Ask the community members to debate for ten minutes who is responsible for the high intake of unhealthy foods that lead to obesity within the community and the American society as a whole. The two teams should air their views openly and with supporting data which they may obtain from the internet available for the class is they wish to.

Resources

Racette S., Deusinger S. & Deusinger, R., (2012). Obesity: Overview of Prevalence, Etiology, and Treatment. Retrieved September 29, 2013 from http://ptjournal.apta.org/content/83/3/276.long

Red Ashram, (2013). Obesity & Fast Food. Retrieved September 29, 2013 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IUQoh_wuMQ