In today’s workshop, we worked with the kids from Grade 3-4 to learn about grains.

Somethings that we went over:

• Whole wheat contains the unrefined portions – germ and bran, which include the most important nutrients.
• Bran is the protective outer shell, high in fiber and b vitamins. Germ is the seed for the new plant, contains b vitamins, some protein, minerals and healthy oils. Endosperm contains starch, protein and some vitamins and minerals.
• Whole Grain means that the grain contains all 3 parts
• When a grain is refined, the most important parts of the grain are removed, leaving the endosperm.

We brought in uncooked barley, buckwheat, and rice, and asked if they could identify it from a list of grains. Afterwards, we made a grain salad with cooked buckwheat, barley, greens, pomegranate seeds, pears, walnuts, blue cheese, and cherry balsamic vinaigrette. Most of the kids were not a huge fan of the blue cheese but they were brave and tried it despite the smell.

Until next time!

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We just had our first workshop of the year, working with vegetarian protein with the older kids.

Here’s a brief overview of the things we taught the kids:

• What being a “vegetarian” means, and why someone would choose to be one.
• The importance of protein in the diet and sources of meatless protein
  • It helps to break down food in the stomach, chemical messengers in the body, build bones, muscles, teeth, skin, fingernails, etc.
  • All foods have protein but good sources include soybeans, lentils, black beans, etc.
• What a complete protein is
  • Explained amino acid as a building block to proteins and that some sources have all the building blocks and some do not
  • Meat is an example of a complete protein where it contains all the building blocks
  • Vegetarian protein sources generally do not and need to be eaten in combination to obtain all the nutrients we need:
    • 

We ended the day by making wraps!

Pass our lessons on to kids that you know and help spread the knowledge about nutrition and healthy eating!

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