Our food directly affects our bodies. This lesson encourages your students to think critically about what happens to the food they eat. You Are What You Eat includes a compilation of fact sheets outlining how macronutrients and micronutrients are ingested, digested, and assimilated by the human body and the consequences of nutritional deficiencies. Use the sheets with one of three types of activities that target different time frames and depth of content. These activities make an excellent introduction or wrap-up to a unit on digestion or biochemistry. This activity complements the Macronutrient Analysis and Mighty Micronutrients lessons in this unit, which include dietary self-study and comparisons between diets of teens from the United States and Haiti.

Subject(s):

Biology, Health, Health, Nutrition, Nutrition, Nutrition

Grade Level:

8-12

Estimated Time:

Classwork or homework: 20-30 minutes per fact sheet, 6 fact sheets

Materials Needed:

Fact sheets (Metabolism; Carbohydrates; Protein; Lipids; Calcium, Phosphorus, and Vitamin D; Vitamin A), Student worksheets

Objective(s):

Concepts Covered:

Nutrition, Macronutrients, Micronutrients, Biological Molecules (Carbohydrates, Lipids, Protein), Digestion, Assimilation, Deficiencies/Disease, Cell Biology

Author(s):

Molly Holden and Susan Dodge, M.S. Ed for Creative Curriculum