DIETIST

HEALTHY LIFESTYLE. OUR DIET AND OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH OUR OWN BODY

On behalf of our Erasmus+ project, Let’s Save the Life on Our Planet, our school invited a nutritionist to hold a workshop with our students.

These are the points of the workshop: “What is hidden in the food we eat?” by Roser Subirats, expert nutritionist.

        Which nutrients can’t be left out in a healthy teenage diet?

 Good quality proteins, carbohydrates and healthy unsaturated fat, iron, calcium + vitamine D (to  improve the growth of bone mass) and zinc (to develop bone and muscular mass).

A balanced diet is the one which keeps the balance between the energy and the nutrients that we need with the energy and the nutrients that we take. Those must include 12-15% meat, fish or eggs, vegetables, 50-55% cereals and legumes, water (which must be drunk all day long), 5 spoonfulls of oilive oil (30-35%) and you must take dairy or fruit as a dessert every day

    Take sparingly : sugar, honey, jam, sweets, sugary drinks, pastry and bakery, butter,margarine, ice-cream and dairy products, alcoholic drinks.

   How to organize the food intakings.

Breakfast/midmorning/tea-time	Lunch and dinner
Cereals Dairy Fresh fruit nuts	Cereals, tubers or legumes Vegetables Proteins Olive oil Fruit and/or dairy Bread and water

     Analysis of highly consumed products among teenagers. What nutrients do they provide? You must read the nutrition facts label. What healthy products/food can substitute these highly consumed products which do not provide healthy balanced nutrients?

             Conclusion.

In the first part of the workshop students compared their own diets with an ideal healthy diet...

·         When they were asked about their breakfast habits, more than a half of them do have breakfast before leaving home for school, but 20% of them never have breakfast before leaving for school.

Daily products are the most commonly taken for breakfast; a few of the students combine them with cereals and a very low percentage of them do ever eat fresh fruit.

·         The majority of the student group have a second breakfast while they are at school (classes begin at 8:30 a.m. and finish at 15:00 p.m.) They usually have a sandwich or a piece of fruit or some fruit juice. A very low percentage has some bakery with a soft drink from time to time.

·         The majority of the group take fatty/sugary foods (the ones at the top of the pyramid) once or twice a week. That kind of food is usually already-bottled juice which some of the students drink daily.

·         Comparing the servings of the different food groups, the least popular one is the vegetable group. Over a 50% of the group never or rarely eat salad or rare vegetables, although a serving a day is recommended so as to take advantage of the vitamins and minerals they provide.

During the second part of the workshop, students were really surprised to see the high number of additives in the ingredients list labels. Those additives can be dangerous for our health if we abuse of them.

   

Finally to finish the workshop the students enjoyed preparing and tasting healthy recipes hummus, home-made nutella, yoghurt with nuts, and almond milkshake with banana.

                                                                                                                

                                                                                                              By: Joan Bayo and Paula Roger