Serving Sizes

We are currently studying nutrition in Health and Career Education.  Specifically, we are learning about how to make healthy food choices using the Canada Food Guide.  The Canada Food Guide tells you how many servings you should eat daily from each of the four food groups.  For children nine to thirteen, the servings are as follows:

Fruits and Vegetables - 6 servings
Dairy and Alternatives - 3 - 4 servings
Meat and Alternatives - 1 - 2 servings
Grains - 6 servings

But, what's a serving?!?  That's what we've been learning about over the last few days.  The food guide tells you how much one serving equals for many common foods.   For example, a 1/2 cup of cooked broccoli is a serving of fruits and vegetables; 3/4 cup of cereal is a serving of grains.  To estimate accurately though, students need some practice.

Ms. Birdsall brought in several different foods. First, students served themselves the amount they would typically eat of that food without measuring.  Next, they measured how much this amount was.  As an example, let's pretend Fred served himself some rice, then measured and found that he would typically eat two cups of rice at dinner.  Then, students checked the station card to look up what one serving of this food was, (For rice, one serving is 1/2 a cup.) and measured that amount so that they could see what one serving looked like.  Finally, they calculated how many servings their first amount was.  In Fred's case, he discovered that he would normally eat about 4 servings of rice at dinner.

Here are the students hard at work:

For which food group do you find it easiest to eat enough servings?  For which food group is it the hardest?