What makes a tasty packed lunch? What effect do healthy and unhealthy foods have on health, well-being and learning? This activity encourages discussion of healthy eating habits at school.

Teaching the activity
Show Me Your Packed Lunch takes its starting point in a small exhibition of three packed lunches:

• The Good
• The Evil
• The Gruesome

The teacher and the children discuss the different types of packed lunch – what is healthy or unhealthy, and why? What do the children’s own packed lunches look like, and what do they like to have in their lunchboxes? The discussion could draw on the WHO’s dietary recommendations:

• Eat a varied diet
• Eat bread, grain, pasta, rice or potatoes every day
• Eat fresh fruit and vegetables every day
• Exercise and watch your weight
• Cut down on fat
• Replace fatty meat with lean meat, fish, poultry, beans and lentils
• Choose low-fat dairy products
• Choose low-sugar foods
• Cut down on salt
• Be aware of kitchen hygiene

The children are then divided into groups which jointly prepare food for a good, healthy packed lunch using recipes provided by the teacher. The food is eaten together, and the children are invited to take the recipes home and use them for their packed lunches on a daily basis.

Step 1
The teacher brings to the class three examples of packed lunches that illustrate a healthy packed lunch, a less healthy packed lunch and a very unhealthy packed lunch.

The Good:
Suggested contents:

• Wholemeal roll with salad, chicken fillet, bacon and tomato
• Carrot and cucumber sticks
• 1 piece of fruit

The Bad:
Suggested contents:

• 1 slice white sandwich bread in a triangle with liver pâté or peanut butter
• 1 slice white sandwich bread with butter + a sausage snack
• 25 ml full-cream yoghurt with fruit + a chocolate milk

The Gruesome:
Suggested contents:

• Takeaway burger and fries
• Coke, ½ litre
• Soft ice cream with chocolate sauce or 1 piece apple pie

Based on these different types of packed lunch, the teacher and children discuss what is healthy and unhealthy in these lunches – and why. They can also discuss what the children’s own lunches look like, and what they like to include. This discussion could take in the dietary advice from the WHO above.

Step 2
The class is then divided into a suitable number of groups which have to prepare packed lunches using recipes provided by the teacher.

Step 3
The class eat the food together with the teacher and discuss what they think of the food.

Tip:
Instead of giving the children set recipes to follow, the groups can make up their own. A competitive element can also be introduced, eg which group can prepare the most creative packed lunch. The prize could be a cookbook on packed lunches.

Show Me Your Packed Lunch can stand alone, but it can also form part of a multidisciplinary course in science or PE focusing on the relationship between exercise and nutrition, or part of a course on health or the body’s organs.

Materials

• Signs for each type of packed lunch: The Good, The Evil and The Gruesome
• Recipes for packed lunches (the teacher’s own or possibly inspired by the above linksvst.)

Educational goals
Show Me Your Packed Lunch makes children aware of why it is important to eat a healthy meal at school, and gives them ideas for how they can prepare healthy, exciting packed lunches themselves.

References
Inspiration for packed lunch recipes:

• www.allrecipes.com
• www.mealsmatter.org