Mrs. Walsh has added a new regularly occurring lesson in her Culinary Class that teaches students all about nutrition. Each week, aside from learning functional living skills that include food safety, meal planning and basic meal prep, students have also been examining nutrition. Coming off the heels of our “Rethink Your Drink Campaign,” 12+ students completed a nutrition lesson called, “How much fat is in our Junk Food?”

In this lesson the class examined junk food snacks like Fried Pork Skins, Flavored Popcorn, Funyuns (snacks that look like onion rings) Doritos, Skinny Popcorn, Fritos, Potato Stix and Pretzel sticks. They placed each snack on a brown paper towel and observed the amount of fat left behind in the form of a stain on the paper. This lesson explained how junk food is highly processed food that has little nutritional value. Students learned that manufactures of these products are designed to “hyper-reward” meaning adding chemicals that trick your brain to eat more.  All junk foods are processed with refined carbohydrates and little vitamins or minerals. They also learn about saturated fat, a fat often called “bad fat” found in animal foods and deep-fried snack foods.

Lesson results were surprising…  Skinny Popcorn had 10 grams of fat in 3 ¾ cup of popcorn. They call that Skinny?? Funyuns had the most fat at 15 grams per serving and left the biggest stain. Pretzel sticks had the lowest with 1 gram of fat. This lesson discussed eating junk food sparingly on a regular basis, and asking the question what are other healthier options?