How to Teach Carbohydrate Counting to Children

Carbohydrates are a representation of stored energy in food. These sugars break down quickly within the body. Individuals looking to lose weight need to carefully consider their carbohydrate intake. When an excess of carbohydrates is present in the body, the surplus is eventually transformed into fat. Those suffering from diabetes also need to carefully count their carbohydrate intake because carbohydrates can have a significant impact on blood glucose levels. The process of counting carbohydrates is quite simple. With a few easy tools and some practice, individuals can easily count their carbohydrates and see a resulting improvement in their health.

Things You'll Need

• Food packaging
• Measuring cups
• Scale (with gram measurements)
• Pencil
• Paper

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Instructions

• 1

  Discuss which foods are carbohydrate rich. The amount of carbohydrates in food varies depending on the type of food. List carbohydrate rich foods with students. Be sure to include on this list all of the major carbohydrate heavy foods, including: breads, pastas, rice, vegetables, dairy foods, fruit and sweets. Explain to students that these foods contain a higher proportion of carbohydrates than other foods, so they need to pay particular attention to their intake of foods on this list.

• 2

  Explore carbohydrate serving size. Explain to students that a serving of carbohydrates is 15 grams. While it would seem easy to measure carbohydrates in food simply by measuring the food in grams and dividing by 15, most foods are made up of more than just carbohydrates, so this method would not be an accurate measure of the number of servings of carbohydrates present in the food.

• 3

  Demonstrate how to find the carbohydrate content of a food. The easiest way to determine the carbohydrate content of a food is to consult the nutrition label. Provide students with some food packaging and help them locate the carbohydrate content on the nutrition label. After they have identified how many carbohydrates are present in a serving of food, have the students organize their foods from highest carbohydrate content to lowest. This will reinforce the idea that different food types have different carbohydrate densities.

• 4

  Help students calculate how many servings are carbohydrates are present in each serving of food. On nutrition labels, carbohydrates are listed in grams. Demonstrate to students that they need to take the number of grams of carbohydrates present in the food and divide it by 15 to determine how many servings of carbohydrates are present in one serving.

• 5

  Practice measuring and weighing foods. Remind students that they must carefully determine how many serving of food they are eating to ensure an accurate count of their carbohydrate intake. If foods are eaten indiscriminately, in unmeasured handfuls, it is impossible to determine exactly how many servings an individual is consuming. Using measuring cups or a scale, measure out servings of food. Students will likely find that an actual serving of food is much smaller than they expected. Remind students that they should measure out all of the food they eat to make sure that they are not exceeding the serving size.

• 6

  Log carbohydrate intake. Practice makes perfect, so instruct your students to log their carbohydrate intake for one week. They can do this easily using a prepared chart or a simple sheet of notebook paper. Ask students to list all of the foods they eat during the day and, next to the food, list how many servings of carbohydrates were present in the food. Students can then add up the sums to determine how many servings of carbohydrates they are eating daily.