First Nations and Inuit

Talking With Your Community About Nutrition Labelling

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Table of Contents

Contents of this Package

Holding a Learning Session: Goal and Objectives for a Learning Session

Holding a Learning Session: Using the Nutrition Labelling presentation package

Planning a Session on Nutrition - Labelling Tips and Reminders

More Nutrition Labelling activities to use with your Community

Contents of this Package:

• Holding a learning session
  • Goal and objectives for a learning session you can lead
  • Using the Nutrition Labelling presentation package
  • Tips and Reminders for planning a session on Nutrition Labelling
• More Nutrition Labelling activities in your community

Holding a Learning Session:
Goal and Objectives for a Learning Session

Here is a goal and objectives for a learning session that you could hold for people in your community. The goal and objectives will provide you with direction for how you might use the presentation.

Goal:

To help people understand nutrition information on food labels so that they can make informed food choices at the store.

Objectives:

• To let people know about the three types of nutrition information that can be found on food labels.
• To share your knowledge with others, so that they can understand how to use nutrition labelling to make informed food choices at the store.
• To link the nutrition information on food labels with messages that can be found on Canada's Food Guide to Healthy Eating, or a local Food Guide that you might use.

Holding a Learning Session: Using the Nutrition Labelling presentation package

This presentation package contains a CD-Rom, and a set of papers. The CD and the papers both contain a presentation that you, as an educator, can use to share information about nutrition labelling with people in your community. They also contain Speakers Notes.

The presentation on nutrition labelling information can be shown to others as PowerPoint slides or copied onto overheads. The Speakers Notes are to help you talk about the information.

You might think about showing the presentation to many different groups of people:

• Students in high school or local college
• Parents in an Aboriginal Head Start Program
• People that have been told they have diabetes, high cholesterol, or heart disease
• Pregnant women attending a community Canada Prenatal Nutrition Program
• (CPNP) project. Husbands or common-laws might join this session.
• Staff at the local store
• People coming to a health fair
• New moms
• Daycare staff
• People joining a community kitchen
• Anyone in your community

The Nutrition Labelling presentation has 21 slides and contains information on the Nutrition Facts table, the list of ingredients, and nutrition claims.

The presentation also contains activity slides that will help people practice what they have just learned about nutrition information on food labels. These activities will make the session more interactive.

Planning a Session on Nutrition Labelling Tips and Reminders

Here's a checklist of things to think about and prepare before an education session:

• how will you let people know about the session
• will you approach groups of people that already meet for some purpose
• how long will the session be
• what would people like to learn from the session
• making a goal and objectives for the session to give it some focus, and to give some guidance to the flow and activities of the session
• will you use an activity that will help people use what they have learned right away
• what equipment and resources can you bring that will help you to share the information, and help others learn the information.

What Equipment is Needed?

If you wish to use the presentation from the CD-Rom, you will need a computer and LCD projector.

If you wish to use the presentation with overheads, you will need an overhead projector and a photocopier to copy the pages onto overhead transparencies.

If you don't have either of these, you could copy the slides onto paper to use as handouts.

You might find it helpful to bring flipchart paper as well.

Other resources

Using samples of food containers can help people practice what they are learning. You might supply these or ask people to bring food containers from home. Good samples are:

• boxes of sweetened and unsweetened cereal
• yogurt containers
• juice and fruit punch containers
• a pop can
• cracker boxes
• cookie packages
• milk containers.

Having a Food Guide can help you make a link between the messages written on the Food Guide and reading food labels to find healthier foods.

More Nutrition Labelling activities to use with your Community

Nutrition labelling information can be shared with your community in many ways. Here are some examples:

An Aboriginal Head Start program worker is giving a session on healthy snacks to parents of preschoolers. She shares with them many examples of healthy snacks including foods with labels. The Aboriginal Head Start worker shows parents how the ingredient list and the Nutrition Facts table can be used to find snacks that are lower in sugar.

A Community Health Representative or Associate (CHR or CHA) takes people with diabetes on a grocery store tour. They want to learn how to use food labels to make better food choices. Making healthier food choices can help people control their blood sugars and lower their risk of developing complications from diabetes. She shows them how to use the ingredient list and the Nutrition Facts table to compare foods. This can help them find the foods that are higher in fibre, lower in fat, and which provide the most vitamins and minerals for the amount of calories they will be eating.

On a home visit, the daughter of an elderly woman asks the Home and Community Care Worker for nutrition tips to help constipation. The Home and Community Care Worker, as part of her care plan, shows the daughter how to use the Nutrition Facts table to compare the amount of fibre in two breakfast cereals and choose the one with more fibre.

A CPNP worker is counselling a pregnant woman who is really motivated to eat well during her pregnancy. The CPNP program worker has examples of foods labelled with the Nutrition Facts table in her office. She explains to the pregnant woman to look for high % Daily Values for nutrients of concern like iron or calcium.

A Community Health Representative or Associate (CHR/CHA) sets up a booth at a local store or a community fair promoting healthy hearts. When community members visit this display he shows them how to use nutrition claims, ingredient lists, or the Nutrition Facts table on various food packages to choose foods lower in saturated fat.