Lessons from Marty Moose

WORLAND – Wednesday afternoon Extension Office Cent$ible Nutrition Educator Cindy Aguilar visited Andrea Cooley's West Side Elementary School third-grade class to teach them about the importance of a balanced diet using the Grazing with Marty Moose program. The main focus of Wednesday's class was the importance of fiber, serving size, reading labels and making sure that the grains that the students eat are whole grains.

Using 20 feet of clothesline to give the students a better understanding of how long their small intestines are and a sponge as an example of how fiber absorbs water, Aguilar explained the digestion process to the students. She stressed that fiber helps clean the small intestines, where your vitamins and minerals are absorbed and that with a high fiber diet a person must drink plenty of water. "Make sure you drink water or it won't be fun," she said.

The students also learned how to read labels to make sure that the cereal that they eat is a healthy choice. Using the labels from Rice Krispies, Total, Frosted Mini Wheats, Frosted Flakes and All-Bran Complete as examples, Aguilar had the students look at the ingredients to see which cereal had whole grains and also were low in sugar. She explained that the fiber content needed to be three grams or more and that the sugar content needed to be six grams or less to make the cereal a healthy choice.

Aguilar stressed the importance of eating breakfast every day and surveyed the class about whether or not they ate breakfast with a majority saying they did. She explained that eating breakfast gave the students the fuel that they needed to learn and grow and passed out cards from Marty Moose that pledged that they would eat breakfast every day. The cards could be put on the refrigerator to remind the students of their pledge.

After all that learning, Aguilar had the kids do simple exercises while answering questions about what they had learned, explaining that to be healthy they needed to get at least 60 minutes of exercise every day. One of the questions asked was if it was important to wash their hands before touching food. A lesson that most learned well because according to Cooley, when the students returned from washing their hands before their healthy snack, she tried to high five each student and most refused.

The students finished off the lesson with a healthy snack of half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with one side white bread and the other side whole wheat bread. Some whole grains were added to make the sandwich healthier and, according to some of the students, not just good but delicious. But even snack time was a lesson as Aguilar quizzed the kids about the choice of bread and what the difference was between the white and whole grain bread.

Marty Moose was not present but the students were able to put answers to his questions, which Aguilar handed out, into his mail bag for later review.