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Description

Become an ingredient, find your food group, then join with your friends to make a balanced meal.

Courtesy The Scout Association: https://www.scouts.org.uk/activities/balancing-act/

Resources

10 minutes
Empty (clean) food packaging or food (or paper and card to write and draw food on)
Food group facts PDF
{https://prod-cms.scouts.org.uk/media/5053/generic-resources-food-group-facts.pdf}

Take it further
You could use these meal ideas for inspiration when planning a two-course meal as part of your Chef Activity Badge.

Instructions

Before you begin
- Make sure everyone knows what the five food groups are, and which kinds of food fit into each. We’ve put together some food group facts to help.


Sort your food
1. Give everyone a piece of food packaging or food. Make sure you give out a variety, with an equal number from each food group. If the number of players isn’t a multiple of five, give out extra fruits and vegetables or starchy carbohydrates, [If you’re not able to get enough food or packaging, you could write or draw foods on pieces of paper or card instead.]
2. Everyone needs to jumble up – they could walk, skip, or run around the room.
3. The person leading the game should say ‘sort’. Everyone should join together with the others in their food group. [For example, if someone has a potato, they’ll need to look for other people with carbohydrates such as a pasta packet or a piece of bread.]
4. Everyone should talk about the food groups they’ve sorted themselves into. Were there any items that were difficult to sort? [For example, a pizza may have been tricky because it could fit into the carbohydrate group because of the dough, or the dairy group because of the cheese on top. The main ingredient is the dough for the base, so it fits better with the other carbohydrates.]
5. Everyone should swap items with someone from another food group, and play again. You can play as many times as you like, until everyone understands the different food groups.


Make your ‘meals’
1. Everyone needs to jumble up again – they could walk, skip, or run around the room.
2. The person leading the game should say ‘cook’. Everyone should race to get into a group of five, to make a meal.
3. Each meal should contain one piece of food from each food group. Groups should decide how to mix their food to make a tasty meal – it may be a good idea to mix sweetcorn into pasta, but a banana would be best served on the side.
4. Everyone can mix up again, and form new meals, as many times as they like.
5. Remind everyone that not every meal has to be perfectly balanced – it’s more important that your diet is balanced over a longer period of time like a day or a week.


Reflection
This activity helps you learn to live healthily. Did you learn anything new about balanced diets? Why is it important to eat some food from every group? What’s your favourite food in each group? Did you see any foods (or combinations of food) you haven’t tried before? Would you like to try them? How can people with allergies, or different diets because of their beliefs, make sure they eat a balanced diet?

Tags

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Badge Links

• Chef - Food Groups
• Skills - Activity
• Skills - Exercise
• Skills - Good & Bad Food