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Farmhouse Breakfast Week: 22 - 28 January 2012

Monday, January 16, 2012

Farmhouse Breakfast Week returns from 22 – 28 January 2012. This well established campaign aims to reduce the number of people who skip breakfast by encouraging them to Shake Up Their Wake Up. Organisers HGCA are keen for nurseries, primary schools, secondary schools and colleges to get involved to help implant healthy breakfast habits from a young age.

Thousands of children skip breakfast every day yet studies from across the globe show that eating a healthy balanced breakfast can benefit their mood, concentration and energy levels, meaning they are more likely to perform better at school.

Throughout the week itself (22 – 28 January 2012), hundreds of events will be taking place across the country to celebrate the most important meal of the day. So why not hold a Shake Up Your Wake Up breakfast event at your school and challenge everyone to shake up their morning routine.

If your school already holds a regular breakfast club, Farmhouse Breakfast Week is the perfect opportunity to hold a special event, or if you’ve been thinking of starting a breakfast club then now is the time!   

Visit www.shakeupyourwakeup.com for suggestions and ideas for classroom activities and breakfast club events, and tips on publicising your events. It is here you can also register your breakfast events and order free resources including stickers and posters

Here on the grainchain.com site there are a variety of breakfast-based activities and resources.  For both 7-11 and 11-14 year olds there is the Design a Better Breakfast unit, which also boasts three helpful videos to support the work.  The aims are to encourage breakfast consumption by demonstrating that there is an almost infinite variety of options of what to eat to break your night-long fast.  Ideas for toast toppings and assorted cereal supplements should ensure that, with a little forethought and planning, everyone can design and prepare a nutritious healthy breakfast to suit their taste, timeframe and budget.

Alternatively you could try one of the delicious breakfast recipes on the site in our Best Breakfast section; eggs and berries feature heavily – even together.  (As pancakes!)

Also available is a classroom poster: Breakfasts Around the World, which is available free of charge.  Investigate whether breakfast meals differ in hot and cold countries; which nations eat out most at breakfast time; and which feast upon leftovers first thing.  To order your copy please email us at grainchain@nabim.org.uk

Healthy eating healthy living

Monday, January 09, 2012

Welcome in the new year by introducing or recapping healthy eating and healthy living with your students.

grainchain.com have a host of resources to help with this. Teaching objectives cover:

  • What is energy
  • how to measure energy
  • how energy is provided by food
  • the different food groups
  • the role of food in the diet
  • the Eatwell plate
  • the foundations of a healthy balanced diet
  • designing and planning a healthy breakfast.

For the 7-11 age group you can use the topic Energy in energy out which consists of two lesson plans, information pages, an interactive whiteboard game and some activity sheets. 

Also for this age group is Food for life a three lesson topic again with information pages, interactive white board activities and also videos.

 For 11-14 year olds our topic Healthy eating healthy living uses a range of resources including information pages, IWB games and activity sheets to explore food groups and test for fat, starch and protein.

Also for that age group are is the topic The balancing act: energy in energy out.  This lesson looks at the role of energy; how we get this from food; the pattern of energy intake during the day and goes on to creating and planning meals and menus.

The best thing since sliced bread?

Thursday, May 12, 2011

An article in today’s Times (The best thing that’s ever happened to sliced bread, Thursday 12 May 2011) investigates a great British invention: the sandwich.  Rumoured to have been invented in 1762 when the 4th Earl of Sandwich, John Montagu, wanted a meal that he could eat during his card game and requested sliced beef in between pieces of toast.

I was brought up in a world full of pre-packaged sandwiches and it seems incredulous that it is just 30 years since the first one hit the shelves: at Marks and Spencers.  Salmon and tomato apparently. Swifly followed by the now-retro prawn mayonnaise in 1981.

grainchain.com offers lots of resources and recipes for bread and flour.  Take a look at our section on where bread comes from to find out how wheat from the fields gets transformed into something we can eat; or be inspired by some of our tasty lunchtime recipes.  Try pitta pockets, or either tuna or ham & cheese wraps.


 
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