Kids in the Kitchen: Nutritional Necessities for Young Cooks

Kentucky Beef Council Kids In the Kitchen: Nutritional Necessities for Young Cooks Updated 4/7/2018

Portion Control

1. Begin by asking students what they think is a serving size. After a few answers by the students, explain to students that a serving size is a generally recommended amount of food. 2. Ask students where they would find the recommended serving size for a food. Look at MyPyramid Tear sheet. Explain to them that it is at the top of the nutrition labels that they may or may not have seen yet at the other station. 3. Explain that there are different ways to measure food. Today students will focus on foods with serving sizes measured using cups or tablespoons. These foods are measured by their volume. 4. Ask students to look at the Meet the Power Foods poster. Point out the serving size information for each food group. Read off the name of each food on the poster in random order. Instruct students to do the following:  If the food is measured by cups or tablespoons, clap your hands.  If the food is measured by another method, stomp your feet. 5. Demonstrate by filling a 1-cup dry measure with dry beans and emptying it onto a plate. Instruct students to do the same measurement. Continue by saying:  Unless you travel with measuring cups in your back pack, it might be hard to make sure you’re eating the correct-sized serving.  For this reason, we are going to measure out 1 cup, ½ cup, 1/3 cup, ¼ cup, and 1 tablespoon. These are commonly used measurements you will see on nutritional labels.  We’re going to look at how big these volumes are and see if we can figure out other objects that are about the same size.  When you come up with something that is about same size as a particular unit of measure such as 1 cup, we call this a “personal reference”. It’s a mental image you carry with you all the time that can help you estimate a serving of a particular food.  Take a look at 1 cup of beans. Would you say this is the same size as a golf ball? Ping-pong ball? Tennis ball? Softball? Tennis ball  What other personal references do you have remember the size of 1 cup? Have students answer this question. 6. Repeat with 1/3, ½ and ¼ cups and the 1 Tbsp making sure to lead them through and compare the amounts as they go along. 7. Next, have students select which item, the deck or cards or index cards, represents the correct portion of 3 oz of lean beef. The deck of cards is the right answer. They may have to look at their MyPyramid Tear Pad to determine the correct portion of beef (3-6 oz). Ask them if they should have 6 oz, how many decks of cards they would have. 7. The volume of a beverage is more difficult to estimate than the volume of a solid food. To demonstrate this:  Pour red water into liquid. Pour the water into the liquid measuring cup to the 1 cup level.  Pour the water into the first glass.  Mark the height of the water in the glass by putting a rubber band around the glass. Kentucky Beef Council Kids In the Kitchen: Nutritional Necessities for Young Cooks Updated 4/7/2018

 Repeat the first 3 steps and pour into the second glass. Mark the height of the second glass and show students. Discuss what they observe (Liquids take the shape of their containers). The same volume of liquid looks different in different shaped glass. It might be hard to know how much liquid is in a glass unless you measure with a measuring cup.)