Create an opportunity for students to think about healthy food choices through interactions with local farms and gardens.

• Visit a local farm or community garden to give students an opportunity to learn about the food life cycle, rainwater harvesting, and to try new or unknown fruits, vegetables, and herbs. 
• Arrange a visit to a farmers’ market and have students take note of what is in season and how many varieties exist of certain fruits or vegetables. Each student will choose one item of interest to report on once back in the classroom – with all information gained from talking with the person selling the item. 

Visiting grocery stores can be an eye-opener for students learning about making healthy food choices.

• Draw a food map in a mini mart or corner grocery store to see where health food is and focus on sodas, snack food, etc.  Are the healthy foods readily available?  Where are the candy bars and salty snacks? 
   
• Divide students in groups.  Each group visits a different store for food shopping. Students use phones to record their experiences, taking note of the variety of foods available, the atmosphere of the store, and anything unusual or noteworthy about the store or its offerings. After the field trips, the students discuss their varied experiences together. The recordings will be edited into photo-voice story.  Suggested store locations are:  Stop ‘n’ Shop, Whole Foods, Wegmans, Trader Joe’s, H-Mart, 7-11, Farmer’s Market, any specialty grocery store – Hispanic, Afro-Caribbean, African, Indian, Asian, etc.

One of the surest – and most fun - ways to build communities is around food. 

• What’s your favorite family meal? The class will share their recipes and evaluate the nutritional benefits in discussion with an emphasis on suggestions (of ingredients or preparation method) to make the recipe as healthy and nutritiously balanced as possible. Students will choose two recipes to “make-over” and will prepare them, sharing the finished meal together.

• Host a cooking event.  Students form teams to plan, shop, cook, and share a healthy meal.  This can be a contest in which students compete to put together the tastiest healthy snack, or a simple potluck with recipes on display.