Discussing Nutrition in Math Class

Discussing nutrition in math class was a great way to connect rates, unit rates and ratios to the real-world.  Thanks Mathalicious!

Drawing students into the discussion with Lebron James and Larry Bird (yes, students recognized him) was a plus. But then we threw in Selina Gomez, Justin Timberlake and Abby Wombach.  We quickly learned that Selina needs to work twice as hard as Lebron to burn her calories.....poor Selina.  What about Sumo wrestlers?

Classes then ventured to McDonalds and how long it would take to burn the calories of of various  menu items when certain exercises were used.  Surprising to many was the idea that sitting actually burns calories.  Happy to see students bringing in their learning from science class to reason through this one.

We left class wondering if and how school menus could be changed.  A topic up for debate.

Blog Post one Team Jordan 7th grader......

Restaurants and school cafeterias should display the amount of exercise is needed to burn off the calories that is in the food that consumers eat. Putting the calories in each food and how much exercise is necessary to burn off those calories is going to affect what and how much people order form restaurants because if a certain food is a lot of calories, then the consumer might be discouraged by how much exercise they would have to do to burn all of those calories. This would eliminate many high-calorie foods. On the other hand, if a food is low-calorie, then the consumer would be happy that it doesn’t require as much exercise to burn it off, therefore the sales of low-calorie foods would probably increase by a significant margin.  Lots of people would hesitate and back away from the high-calorie foods, but low-calorie foods might become more popular. If restaurants wrote their menus in terms of exercise needed to burn off the calories, then that would probably affect people even more because they have a better understanding on how much and what kind of exercise is needed to burn all of those calories, rather than just putting the calories on the menus.

If school cafeterias posted the calories of their foods, I don’t think it will make that much of a difference. First of all, the average student doesn’t know how many calories they’re supposed to consume, and they should already know that school food isn’t that healthy in the first place, so putting the calories on there would really matter that much. If schools started to post how much exercises is needed to burn off those calories, they might think twice about eating some foods, but again, I don’t think this impacts younger people that much. Most students do some kind of exercise or recreational activity, so they’re already getting the exercise they need.

However, all of this would depend on what kind of body-type you have. People that weigh more actually have and easier time losing calories than light people. A person burns 0.063 cal/lb playing basketball, 0.076 cal/lb playing soccer, and 0.019 cal/lb walking.   A person that weighs 125lbs (like Selena Gomez) would burn 7.875 cal/min playing basketball, 9.5 cal/min playing soccer, and 2.375 cal/min walking. Now, let’s analyze a person that weighs 250lbs (like LeBron James) burns 15.75 cal/min playing basketball, 19 cal/min playing soccer, and 4.75 cal/min walking. So, if you want to burn more calories, you need to gain weight, double the exercise you’re doing, or change to a different exercise that burns more calories per pound.

Now, I will inform you about how much exercise is needed to burn off some of calories in certain foods. If LeBron James, or a person that is 250lbs, ate a Big Mac, he would burn the 550 calories in it in 35 minutes playing basketball, 29 minutes playing soccer, and 116 minutes just walking. If he ate a salad without dressing, which is 20 calories, he would burn all of that 1.3 minutes playing basketball. 1 minute playing soccer, and 4.2 minutes walking.

Different activities burn more calories than others. For example, bowling burns 0.023 cal/lb, golfing burns 0.033 cal/lb, and swimming burns 0.064 cal/lb. Ice skating burns 0.053 cal/lb, tennis burns 0.061 cal/lb, and weight training 0.039 cal/lb. As you can see,  different activities can burn more calories than other activities. Swimming burns twice as many calories as golfing. Even sitting burns calories! It burns 0.009 cal/lb.

In conclusion restaurants should, but schools shouldn’t post the calories of each food. The time to burn the calories doing some exercise probably should for both though.