Minds On

Planning a healthy meal

Canada’s Food Guide provides healthy eating recommendations as well as healthy recipes. Using Canada’s Food Guide, let’s plan a healthy and balanced meal for a family of four. We will use flyers to plan our meal. We will record the price of each grocery item we are going to use in our meal plan. Then, we will estimate the total cost of our meal.

Check out this video

Access the following video “New Canadian Food Guide” to learn more about balanced and healthy meals.

You can find more information by visiting Canada’s Food Guide(Opens in a new window) website.

Choosing the right foods

Let’s think of some healthy foods! Together, we will make a list of foods based on Canada’s Food Guide.

Record your list and ideas in your notebook or another method of your choice.

Action

Grocery shopping

Task 1

We are going to go shopping for some food items. In the following baskets there are food items with prices attached to each item. Estimate the total cost for all the items in each basket.

What is the total cost of each basket? Which basket is the most expensive? Which basket is the least expensive? Can you think of some reasons why the prices are what they are?

Task 2

Choose two items from each of the baskets in Task 1. Estimate the cost.

Use pictures, numbers and words to explain your answer.

Practice 1

Explore flyers on the computer and make a shopping list for one breakfast, one lunch and one dinner for one individual.

You can use the following fillable and printable Shopping List to record your food items. You can also draw the items for the shopping list on a piece of paper or use another method to record your food items.

Shopping List

Press the ‘Activity’ button to access the Shopping List.

Activity (Open PDF in a new tab)

Practice 2

Using your shopping list from Practice 1, estimate the total cost for the three meals.

  • Which meal costs the least? Why?
  • Which meal costs the most? Why?
  • If possible, compare your shopping list with a partner. Is yours more expensive? Why?

Brainstorm

Discussion

Which was the most challenging question to solve? Why?

What strategy helped the most as you solved the questions?

Consolidation

Dinner for one

In this activity, you will be thinking of some food items that you want to include in a dinner for one individual. You can search different sources such as the internet to find the foods you wish to use.

  • Create a shopping list for all the food items needed for the dinner. You can also draw a shopping list for the dinner.
  • Record all the prices for each food item on the shopping list or next to your drawings.
  • Use a calculator to calculate the total cost for the entire meal.
  • If you had $40 to pay for your groceries, how much change would you receive?

Reflection

How do you feel about what you have learned in this activity?  Which of the next four sentences best matches how you are feeling about your learning? Press the button that is beside this sentence.

I feel...

Now, record your ideas about your feelings using a voice recorder, speech-to-text, or writing tool.