Habits: Sugar, Salt and Fat
Sugar, salt, and fat are common ingredients in food. Too much sugar can cause health problems like obesity and diabetes. Too much salt can lead to high blood pressure and heart disease. While some fat is necessary for a healthy diet, too much-saturated fat can also increase our risk of heart disease.
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Please note that the number of calories an average 12-year-old needs per day depends on many factors, such as their sex, height, weight, and level of physical activity. However, on average, a sedentary 12-year-old girl needs about 1,400-1,600 calories per day, while a sedentary 12-year-old boy needs about 1,600-2,000 calories per day. It's important to remember that these are just estimates, and the actual number of calories a specific 12 year old needs may be different.
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Video
Puzzles
Turkish
English
Take a Stance
Task 1: Create a poster to be displayed at your school that details what you think about how much sugar, salt and fat people your age eat.
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Task 2: Develop a recipe for a healthy snack that takes less than 60 minutes to make that you can share on social media.
Experiments and Challenges
Task 1:
Find a social media influencer who is encouraging healthier eating. Try out one of their suggestions for a snack, and then, with your family, select one recipe and make it together and share!
How did cooking and eating together make you feel? Is this something that you might be able to do at least once a week or even once a month? Building weekly and seasonal traditions around cooking together helps strengthen your family’s commitment to a healthy lifestyle.
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Task 2
Look at the food packaging on one shelf of your family’s grocery cupboard. What percentage of items have unhealthy sugar, salt and fat levels?
Many processed foods have added sugar, which can be listed as ‘sugar’ on the ingredient list, or sucrose, dextrose, glucose, inverted sugar syrup/invert syrup and endless other varieties. And, there is often more than one form of sugar in a product, which can mean that the added sugar can really creep up.
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See what happens when you put a can of a regular and diet version of your favourite soft drink in a sink full of water - do they both float, sink or behave differently? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0wrB78J_CA
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Salt is also high in many processed foods, particularly savoury snacks, condiments, and packaged breads. Salt can hide in unexpected places. So, too, can fat. Many processed foods have fat added to make them taste better, which can mean many extra calories. But not all fat is bad, and our bodies need small amounts of what is called ‘fatty acids’, which we need to help us absorb vitamins A, D and E.
Front-of-pack nutritional labelling is designed to help us see if the levels of sugar, salt and fat – and looking for foods that are ‘green’ across all the criteria are generally a healthy choice.
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But it’s also good to limit the number of processed foods we eat as much as possible, and eating a varied diet with fresh fruit and many different vegetables is always a winner!
Weird and Wonderful Facts
Choosing foods like bananas, fish, oats, nuts, and seeds will help boost your mood and aid in gaining mental clarity. A happy body means a happy mind and more happy times!
A large study found unhealthy diets full of processed foods cost $1.50 (USA) more a day than healthy ones full of whole foods
Eating right could boost your energy and enhance your athletic performance - if you get tired or hungry between meals, try eating small meals and snacks every few hours rather than three large meals a day