Nutrition

These links are for students and teachers looking for nutrition information. Health, science, and family and consumer education classes can use these sites to find nutritional information, learn about food labeling, examine how the media influences our eating habits, and explore issues such as dieting and eating disorders. Math teachers may want to explore these sites for their wealth of numbers and percentages that could be used to create authentic problems about food and diet.

Quick Links:  Elementary | Middle | High School

Elementary School

The entertaining Dole Super Kids site has lots of information about fruits and vegetables. The site uses music, video, and animated games to teach basic nutritional information while encouraging children to eat their fruits and veggies. The site also features recipes and nutritional information. The teachers' site includes suggestions for using the Kids' site, lesson plans, printable charts, and more.

Check out Fizzy's Lunch Lab if if you're looking for nutritional information with a little fun mixed in. Set "in a place where a gruesome grease-monger can turn healthy kids into super-sized lazy zombies," this website from PBS features video segments and interactive games.

Staying Healthy, from the Nemours Center for Children's Health Media KidsHealth site, provides information on a variety of nutrition topics, such as eating for sports, figuring out food labels, the food guide pyramid, and so on.

Hunger Facts, from Kids Can Make a Difference, provides brief facts about hunger, food, and nutrition worldwide.

The Kid's Food CyberClub features simple food facts in the form of quizzes. Designed for grades 3-5, this site from the Connecticut Association for Human Services and also includes recipes children have submitted.

Lunch-o-Matic from the PBS series Arthur challenges students to create a healthy meal by choosing different foods from a conveyor belt. Or help DW choose foods in Supermarket Adventure.

Middle School

Plastic Fork Diaries is a Web-based serial story from Maryland Public Television. It follows six middle school students as they explore the relationship between food and their changing bodies, cultural differences, athletic performance, and family relationships. Nutritional information, recipes, food history, and other information is woven into the story or independently accessible. The site includes a downloadable activity guide.

SmartMouth, from the Center for Science in the Public Interest, provides nutritional information aimed at helping children make healthy food choices despite deceptive advertising. In one activity, students to create a meal with a variety of fresh or fast foods and compare readings on the sat-fat meter and the cal-o-meter.

girlshealth.gov features sections on fitness, nutrition, and more. This site for girls is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHSS).

Fast Facts: Nutrition Facts on Popular Fast Food Restaurant Items allows users to find nutritional information for specific items like a Big Mac or a bean burrito. Users can also search by maximum amount of calories, fat, cholesterol or sodium or sugar, or for fast food items that have certain allergen factors.

Space Food, from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), features a space food fact sheet, video clips about how astronauts eat in space, how space food is packaged and more.

High School

The Mayo Clinic's Nutrition and Healthy Eating Center provides a wealth of information,including dietary guidelines and a comparison of food pyramids for different cultures (scroll down to Food Pyramid Guide). Though written for adults, the site contains lots of information of interest to teens. The Healthy Recipes Center could be useful for practical classes.

The USDA Food and Nutrition Information Center site includes the USDA National Nutrient Database that allows users to search for any food. PDA (personal data assistant) users may download this dataset. Students also can get lists of food items containing specific nutrients such as protein, fat, iron, or sodium.

NutritionData is a site designed to aid in analyzing nutrition facts. The site, developed by two fitness enthusiasts, uses USDA data but provides additional tools for search and analysis. A graphic depiction of the caloric ration (percentage of the food’s calories that come from carbohydrates, fats, and protein) of each food is a useful feature. The Pantry function allows users to save specific foods and create recipes or meals which can then be analyzed. The Fast Food Finder gives quick access to nutrition facts for 10 popular fast food chains.

Food and Fitness, from the Nemours Center for Children's Health Media TeensHealth site, provides information on nutrition, dieting, exercise, and eating disorders, as well as recipes.

Nutrition from girlshealth.gov nutritional information especially written for teen girls. Included are sections on healthy weight, fast food, vegetarian diets, and more. This site was developed by the DHSS Office on Women's Health to give girls current health information.

The USDA's Food and Nutrition Information Center provides information on food composition, dietary guidelines, and more.

This portal site for U.S. Government information on nutrition contains many fact sheets, statistics, and government reports.

Health Canada features Canada's Food Guide.

The British Broadcasting Corporation's (BBC) Introduction to Nutrition site includes articles on different nutrition topics as well as some "cool tools," such as a calorie calculator and a quiz.

The University of Illinois Nutritional Analysis Tool allows users to create a personal diet list. It analyzes your list for nutrientional content, and compares it to the recommended daily allowances. It will also suggest different foods to supplement your diet. An energy calculator will also calculate the number of calories you burn in a day.


Created 11/2005
Last updated 7/28/10