Huan-Shih 'Nutrition 5 Meals' Launched in Changhua Yongjing Summer Camp Demonstrates School Nutrition Education Program

To help children develop the ability to make healthy, sustainable, and practical food choices from a young age, the Huan-Shih Public Welfare Food Culture Education Foundation held a two-day 'Nutrition 5 Meals Summer Camp' at Yongjing Elementary School in Changhua County starting today (27th). The camp transforms food education into board games, food label reading, healthy plate design, and anti-food waste actions, guiding children from recognizing food, understanding information to making actual choices, and using Yongjing as the starting point for promoting the Changhua school nutrition education demonstration program.

This camp is an experimental teaching session for the 'Nutrition 5 Meals' food education model and also marks the starting point for the Huan-Shih Education Foundation's promotion of school nutrition education in Changhua Yongjing. This time, starting from local schools, it accumulates teaching experience for the subsequent promotion of 'Nutrition 5 Meals'. The Director of Education, Changhua County Government, Ms. Qiao Lili, and the Principal of Yongjing Elementary School, Ms. Su Yuejiao, also attended to care about the course promotion situation. Under the guidance of lecturers and teaching teams, children actively participated in board games, group discussions, and hands-on activities, with continuous questions and sharing on-site, demonstrating a high interest in food knowledge and life issues.

Lecturers lead children to recognize food labels and food knowledge through games and hands-on activities, cultivating children's ability to read information in daily life. (Image provided by Huan-Shih Food Culture Education Foundation)

'Nutrition 5 Meals' does not mean eating five meals a day, but rather redefines what children need to learn about each meal through five core competencies: knowledge, health, sustainability, humanities, and life. The two-day course, through observation, reading, discussion, and practice, guides children through the learning process of 'recognition, choice, and practice'.

On the first day of the course, children first recognized the journey of food from the production area to the dining table through the sustainable board game 'Balanced Earth Gourmet'; at lunchtime, they used the '211 Healthy Plate Concept' (vegetables occupy 1/2, protein and whole grains each occupy 1/4) to make lunch using local ingredients. During the process, a child saw that there was no white rice in the plate and exclaimed, 'This won't fill me up,' which became an opportunity for the lecturer to help children re-recognize whole grains. Healthy eating is not just following a single menu, but learning to flexibly choose and combine different life situations. Even when eating out, you can choose sweet potatoes or potatoes, paired with chicken, tofu, lettuce, and cherry tomatoes, to form a nutritionally balanced meal.

Children recognize the source of food and the concept of sustainability through the 'Balanced Earth Gourmet' board game. (Image provided by Huan-Shih Food Culture Education Foundation)

The afternoon's 'Sugar Tower' challenge allowed children to weigh, stack, and compare the sugar content of different beverages, learning to read food labels. During the process, children would occasionally exclaim, 'I didn't realize I could drink so much sugar unknowingly,' turning abstract nutritional information into visible and comparable life experiences.

The second day's course will start from world food culture and anti-food waste actions, combining kitchen waste weighing, leftover discussions, 'Kitchen Waste Big Battle', 'Healthy Eating Rap', and 'Anti-Food Waste Little Ambassador Oath' activities, guiding children to understand that cherishing food is not just about reducing waste, but also includes respect for the source of food, land, farmers, and the environment, and thinking about what actions they can take in their daily lives.

Huan-Shih Education Foundation Chairwoman and Executive Director Lin Fangyan said, 'True food education is not about telling children what they cannot eat, but about letting children understand why they should eat this way, how to make choices, and being willing to bring health back to the family.' She pointed out that 'Nutrition 5 Meals' takes transparent diet, healthy diet, and sustainable diet as the core, hoping that children can make healthy and responsible choices for every meal.

The Huan-Shih Food Culture Education Foundation, which is about to enter its 11th year, has been deeply involved in school nutrition education for a long time, continuously developing teaching materials, lesson plans, diagrams, board games, and teaching resources, transforming food knowledge into daily practice. The Huan-Shih Education Foundation stated that the representative of the foundation's donor, Wei Yingchong, cares about the health of the next generation and promotes food education culture through the foundation, integrating food education with daily life. In the future, it will continue to expand the 'Nutrition 5 Meals' program, allowing more students to have the opportunity to learn about food knowledge from life.