	Division of Nutrition Assistance
	National School Lunch Program
	School Breakfast Program
	Child and Adult Care Food Program (center-based and home-based)
	Summer Food Service Program
	Special Milk Program
	Nutrition Education/Team Nutrition
	Child Nutrition Website
	Staff Directory

Jazzy Food and Nutrition Bulletin Board Ideas

Division of Nutrition Assistance

Snack Pyramid

Directions for Design
The Food Guide Pyramid is shown with various healthy snack suggestions.

Suggested Materials

A pyramid made of construction paper or poster board
Illustrations of foods, empty containers or pictures of nutritious snack foods
Lettering for title

Learning Activities

1. Identify healthy snacks on the Food Guide Pyramid.
Ask students to cut out pictures of their favorite snacks. Using the large Pyramid, students can classify each snack in one or more of the five main foods groups. Explain why snacks should be selected from the five groups, rather than from the tip of the Pyramid. The tip contains snacks such as soft drinks, candy, cakes, and cookies. These snacks provide calories and little else nutritionally. Most people should eat them in small amounts and not often.

Ask students to find pictures of snacks they like that are in one of the five groups. Staple or tape them to the Pyramid on the bulletin board.

2. Examine Nutrition Facts labels.
Ask students to track the snacks they eat for one day by keeping their snack wrappers. Students should bring the wrappers to school and share what they have discovered about their snacking habits. Then, ask them to take a snack poll to determine the most popular snacks of the class.

Next, students use the Nutrition Facts labels on wrappers to determine the total fat content for each snack. On mural paper, they draw a line and label it with zero, up to the highest number of fat grams reported. Then ask students to line up the snacks by fat content. Students use this snack-fat number line to see where most popular snacks appear. They also can use the number line to plan lower-fat snacks to substitute for the higher-fat snacks they eat.

Suggest that students make a poster featuring the snack number line to remind them to choose lower-fat snacks in the future. They could color code low-fat snacks, and indicate "recommended," and "not recommended" sides of the number line.

3. Identify healthy snack substitutes.
Ask students to examine the list of favorite snacks from Activity 1 or 2. They probably will find that many of the snacks contain a lot of fat or sugar and belong in the tip of the Pyramid. One way they could cut down on these foods would be to make a snack substitute chart. Instruct them to draw three columns on paper; list their favorite snacks in the first column; then list two healthful substitutes, one in each column; and draw a line across the page. Their substitutions should come from the five main food groups. If they are thinking of having a candy bar, they could look at their chart and see that they could have an apple or some pretzels instead.

For more bulletin board ideas:
Page 1 ~ Page 2 ~ Page 3
Jazzy Main Menu

	Executive Office of the Superintendent
	School and Community Support
	Student and School Performance
	Quality Educators
	Management and Finance
	Regional Service Centers