Classroom Activities

(Prime Time Parent workshop kit by the Alliance for Children and Television, 1995)
 

• Ask your students to watch one hour of Saturday morning cartoons, counting the number of commercials and making note of how many of them are for food. How many are advertisements for cereals and how many are for 'junk food'? Ask the students to note the time of year as well. Around Christmastime there will be more toy commercials than food commercials. Teach the students to create graphs using these statistics.
  
• Have students make lists of misleading phrases or "weasel words" which are used frequently in food commercials – such as "part of a complete breakfast". (Take a look at the Watching for Weasel Words handout from the Prime Time Parent Kit)
  
• Check your school or school board's media centre or your local public library for the video Buy Me That 3! A Kid's Guide to Food Advertising (you can also find segments of the Buy Me That series on YouTube). This informative, entertaining, briskly-paced video takes on the issue of food advertising by examining cola taste tests, product packaging, sports drinks, the work of food stylists, nutritional claims and sweepstakes contests. (There are two more videos in this series – Buy Me That! A Kid's Survival Guide to Advertising and Buy Me That Too! – look for them at your school board's media centre or library.)
  
• An idea from Buy Me That 3! A Kid's Guide to Food Advertising is a "taste test." Are your students influenced by taste or by advertising? Have your students conduct their own "Brand Name" face-off. Taste tests can include popular foods and drinks such as soft drinks, potato chips, chocolate chip cookies, chocolate milk mixes, french fries–just be sure to include cheaper, generic brands along with the assorted name brands.
  
• Another idea from Buy Me That 3! A Kid's Guide to Food Advertising is to conduct a "Snack Food Chemistry Class." Have kids create lists of ingredients used in different snack foods, and take a look at what's really in your favourite snack food–we guarantee that it will be nothing like the snacks that Mom makes! Also, take note of the amounts of different ingredients that are in a product. There are many different ways of saying "sugar"– try measuring exactly how much sugar (or glucose, or corn syrup, or honey) is in your favourite cereal.
  
• Check out the kids consumer magazine Zillions at your local library. Consumer goods and foods are tested and rated by kids in this youthful version of Consumer Reports.
  
• Look at the profile of the American youth activist known as the No Junk Food Kid, and discuss with students what they could do to promote healthy eating at their school.
  
• Check out Food Advertising Tricks You Should Know About at the PBS Kids site Don't Buy It.