Grade 10

Key Concepts for Student Learning :

• Food choices are made for various reasons –hunger, culture, mood, tradition, taste, media, peer or social influences or personal health. Healthy eating is different for everyone; there is more than one way of eating that can promote health and wellbeing. We need to eat regularly and eat a variety of foods to help meet our nutritional needs, especially during adolescence. 
• We live in a culture that normalizes dieting and restricting our food choices to achieve an ideal body; this is known as diet culture. Diets that eliminate or restrict key nutrients are harmful. For example, following low carbohydrate eating patterns.  
• Media images of ideal bodies can create unrealistic ideals that lead to disordered eating habits like dieting, skipping meals or using unhealthy supplements. Healthy bodies come in all shapes and sizes. 
• Energy drinks also pose a serious health and safety risk as they contain high amounts of caffeine, combined with other ingredients not in tea and coffee, that can be dangerous. 
• There is a lot of misinformation about food and eating available, and it’s important to be critical of the information you see and hear. Credible tools and resources on healthy eating include Canada’s Food Guide, your local public health unit, or a registered dietitian.
• Our food and beverage choices at school are influenced by lots of factors, including the foods available in and around our school, what and if our friends are eating, and the time and space we have to eat in. We can advocate for changes to the food culture in our school.

Note: do not have students engage in self-monitoring of eating or physical activity behaviour as this can cause harm. 

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