Family Nutrition Course—Lesson 3 (Grains and Sugars) Outline
Purpose:
Teach participants to identify whole grain foods and understand their benefits as compared to simple sugars
Pre-class red tape:
1. Print out copies of the Lesson 3 Worksheets for every participant.
2. Buy food. Check supply closet fridge first to avoid buying repeat perishable ingredients.
3. 24-48 hrs before class, call each community participant to confirm attendance.
Set-up:
Activity
Time
Description
45 min
– 1 hr
See curriculum below.
Cooking
Min. #
volunteers
required
2 for
adults/2 for
kids
3-4
35-45
min
Goal is to have participants do as many hands on things as
possible while getting everything done in a timely manner.
For example, the volunteers on cooking duty can prep and
cook about 2/3 of the food while teaching is going on, then
have participants form an assembly line after teaching is
done to finish the remaining 1/3. That way, as soon as they
are done prepping food and it starts to cook, people can
start to eat the stuff that was already prepared. Be flexible
and creative with this time block, as different recipes will
call for different arrangements (e.g. may have to prep
before teaching if things have a long cooking time).
Eating
Clean up
Everybody
Everybody
15 min
20-30
min
Self-explanatory
Clean all kitchen ware. Divide up uneaten food to give to
participants and/or volunteers. Upon returning to campus,
place any unused perishable ingredients in the supply
closet fridge for use next week.
Teaching
Recipe: TBD
Materials:
1. Apples and apple juice
2. 5-6 Loaves of different types of bread (white, whole wheat, whole grain, potato, white wheat, etc)
3. 4-5 Boxes of different types of cereals (sugary vs whole grain)
4. Grains and Sugars Handout
Post-class red tape:
1. Upload any new participants’ survey responses to Google site.
Curriculum:
KEY POINTS TO EMPHASIZE
1. Whole grains make you feel fuller longer because of their fiber content. This lets you avoid over- eating.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Whole grains protect you from disease (heart disease, colon cancer).
Too much sugar in your diet adds calories without nutrition.
Too much sugar in your diet can give you diabetes.
RELATION TO PREVIOUS LESSON
Continuing education about how food relates to your health and your body. First fats and salts, now
sugars and grains.
1) Introductory Activity
Pre-class quiz: give the instructions for the quiz (circle the correct answers). Remind participants that this is
not a test; we will collect the quizzes at the end of class, but it is to track how well we’re doing with the teaching, not
to grade their performance.
Brainstorm sugars and grains eaten today
Taste test whole grains
Discuss pros and cons of sugars and grains
2) Grains (let participants know that their handout contains the info that will be discussed and that it contains space
for them to take notes)
Define whole grains
Discuss processed grains vs whole grains
Focus on fiber content
Visual demonstration: apple juice vs apple
Incorporating whole grains into your diet
What are whole grains?
- Definition: Whole grains are foods made from the entire grain seed, including the husk and the kernel (the
inside and the outside)
What are processed grains?
- Definition: the outside husk of the grain (corn, wheat, etc) has already been taken off by a machine or human
processing, so that you only get the inside part of the grain. Examples: white flour, white bread,
Why do we care about whole grains versus “processed grains”?
With whole grains you get the nutritional benefit of the kernel (the outside part), and it takes your body more
time to digest it, so it slows down the absorption of your food, making you feel fuller longer.
Why does it make me feel fuller longer?
Because whole grains have fiber, which is all the plant “stuff” around the sugar in grains and fruits. Having to
digest the fiber along with the sugar slows down the process, making you feel fuller longer and giving your
body to time to use the sugar as you eat it, rather than turning it in to fat.
Visual Demonstration: Bring in apples and apple juice. Each apple has 15g of sugar and each cup of apple juice
has 30g of sugar. That means that for the same amount of sugar in a cup of juice you could eat two apples.
Make the point that two apples would make you feel much more satisfied and full than just drinking the
container of apple juice.
So, now that we know that whole grains good, how do we include them in our diet?
1. Start day with whole grains (whole grain cereal or oatmeal)
2. Use whole grain bread for lunch or snacks
3. Change your potatoes – sweet potatoes instead of white potatoes. Leave the skin on.
4. Use whole fruits and vegetables instead of juice (or 100% juice)
5. Use beans/ lentils for protein instead of meat
Activity: Which would you choose and why? Pass the loaves of bread around. Have participants read the labels and
decide which loaves are healthiest and explain why. At the end of class, participants can take home whichever loaves
they want (bring ziploc bags to divide loaves if multiple people want them) (10 minutes)
3) Sugars
Poor nutritional quality of sugar
Connection to diabetes and diabetes prevention
Discussion: What is so bad about sugar anyway?
- Adds calories without adding any nutritional content, i.e. “empty calories”
- Hungry sooner and eat more
- Sugar is “addictive” in a sense, the more you eat the more you want
- Body converts unused sugar to fat  heart disease/weight gain
- IMPORTANT: Sugar overload means that the body can’t use sugar as well as it used to. After a long time
of eating more sugar than you need, your body stops being able to absorb the sugar effectively. This is
what leads to diabetes.
- Once you have diabetes it is hard to manage, that is why PREVENTION is so important! YOU CAN HELP
PREVENT DIABETES IN YOURSELF AND YOUR CHILDREN
- “Hidden sugars”: high fructose corn syrup = sugar; watch out for it in the list of ingredients
Demonstration: Use the plastic demos of sugar amounts in different foods to let participants see how much sugar
they consume when eating common foods. See if they have any misconceptions about foods that they think are low
sugar but are actually not. Pass around the boxes of cereals to demonstrate that they can contain vastly different
amounts of sugar (hence the importance of reading labels).
4) Post-class quiz
Ask the participants to look over their quizzes and mark their final answers with boxes. They can change their
responses if they like; just leave the circled answer as-is and box what they think the new correct answer should be.
Collect the quizzes.