Teaching Sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

5 minutes – Part A: Activating Prior Knowledge
15 minutes – Part B: Food Advertising
20 minutes – Part C: Sales Executives
5 minutes – Reflection

Part A: Activating Prior Knowledge

Step 1.

Create a T-Chart on the board.

Step 2.

Ask students if they can name some healthy foods. List these on one side of the T-Chart.

Step 3.

Ask students to name some less healthy foods. List these on the other side of the T-Chart.

Step 4.

Can students explain why they're less healthy? What is common among all of these suggestions?

You might find that there is a clear theme of fresh fruit and vegetables in the healthy column and foods that are more processed with high amounts of added sugar in the other.

Step 5.

Facilitate a discussion about sugary and salty foods. These things all make food taste delicious, but they're not very good for our bodies. However, remind students that it's okay to have some 'occasional' foods, so long as we're only eating them as a treat and not all the time.

Part B: Food Advertising

Step 1.

Read The Sneaky Sugar Cube.

Source: Healthy Stories For Kids - Sneaky Sugar Cube - Hidden Sugar In Foods: https://youtu.be/7pxU61XbEhg

Step 2.

Display the Fruity Juicey Advertisement on the board and read the copy:

‘Fruity Juicy’ Juices are bursting with Fruit flavour and wholesome goodness. This delicious and nutritious drink provides you with a boost of energy to take on the challenges of the day!

Step 3.

Ask students to identify the words that made the juice sound really healthy. Suggestions might include:

fruit
wholesome
goodness
delicious
nutritious
boost of energy.

Step 4.

Explain that all of these words and phrases make the food sound good for us because it is high in all the stuff that is considered healthy.

Step 5.

For older students, you could open up the conversation to other common phrases in this kind of advertising, such as: low cholesterol, zero calories, diet, and vitamins. These make us think they're healthy by having less 'bad' stuff in them.

Step 6.

However, let's look at the Nutrition Information Label to find out what's really going on with this juice. First of all, it turns out that this juice contains 20.5 grams of sugar. That's about 5 teaspoons! The World Health Organisation recommends we only eat 6 teaspoons (or about 24 grams) of sugar every day.

Step 7.

Explain to students that even though this advertisement wants us to believe that this drink is healthy, and even though we might believe this drink is good for us because it contains healthy ingredients like fruit, the huge amount of hidden sugar means its only an 'occasional' drink for us. Water is a much healthier alternative.

Step 8.

Ask students why would companies try to confuse you with their advertising?

Explain to students that of course these companies want their products to appear healthy. Our parents or caregivers might not buy us lollies, but they're more likely to buy us something that they think is healthy.

However, companies want you to enjoy the food so that you'll buy it again. They do this by adding lots of sugar and salt so that it tastes good.

Therefore, some companies are very sneaky and try to make unhealthy products look healthy when they're actually full of other, less healthy things.

Remind students that they can always check the nutrition label for the real facts.

Part C: Sales Executives

Step 1.

For this task, students are going to create a rival advertisement for a drink that's actually healthy - water! If the advertisement companies are trying to get us to believe that these drinks high in sugar are good for us, then we need to fight back with an advertising campaign that gets people loving the healthier alternative.

Step 2.

As a class, brainstorm some ideas, including:

Name - It needs an exciting, catchy name so that people will remember it.
Colours - Bright colours work best to catch people's eyes. Try to limit yourself to two or three colours at most.
Images - Lots of advertising features an animal or cartoon mascot.
Keywords - Remind students about some of the convincing terms and phrases advertising companies use to get people to buy their product, such as 'no added sugar' - only in this case, these will actually be true!

Step 3.

Independently, and using the Drink Can Design Worksheet, have students create their drink can label design.

Reflection

Some students can volunteer to share their work with the class.

Ask students: 'What are some of the ways companies use ads to trick us into buying their food?'

Teacher Reflection

Take this opportunity to reflect on your own teaching:

What did you learn about your teaching practice today?
What worked well?
What didn't work so well?
What would you share?
Where to next?
How are you going to get there?

SugarByHalf - Guardians of the Gums - Advertising

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