Balancing act

Before you begin

• Make sure everyone knows what the five food groups are, and which kinds of food fit into each. We’ve put together some food group facts to help.

Sort your food

1. Give everyone a piece of food packaging or food. Make sure you give out a variety, with an equal number from each food group. If the number of players isn’t a multiple of five, give out extra fruits and vegetables or starchy carbohydrates,

2. Everyone needs to jumble up – they could walk, skip, or run around the room.
3. The person leading the game should say ‘sort’. Everyone should join together with the others in their food group.

4. Everyone should talk about the food groups they’ve sorted themselves into. Were there any items that were difficult to sort?

5. Everyone should swap items with someone from another food group, and play again. You can play as many times as you like, until everyone understands the different food groups.

Make your ‘meals’

1. Everyone needs to jumble up again – they could walk, skip, or run around the room.
2. The person leading the game should say ‘cook’. Everyone should race to get into a group of five, to make a meal.
3. Each meal should contain one piece of food from each food group. Groups should decide how to mix their food to make a tasty meal – it may be a good idea to mix sweetcorn into pasta, but a banana would be best served on the side.
4. Everyone can mix up again, and form new meals, as many times as they like.
5. Remind everyone that not every meal has to be perfectly balanced – it’s more important that your diet is balanced over a longer period of time like a day or a week.