How to read a food label
A tactile, age-appropriate activity for grades 4 and up.
This is one of the highest-impact 45-minute lessons in the OMG curriculum, and it needs no equipment beyond what students carry in their lunch bags.
Step one: collect. Each student brings one packaged-food wrapper from home. The pile itself is a lesson; count how many items in an ordinary week arrive in plastic with a label.
Step two: find the two truths. Every label has an ingredients list (what is in it, in descending order by weight) and a nutrition panel (how much of what, per serving). Students learn that the first three ingredients are the real identity of the food, whatever the front of the pack claims.
Step three: play detective. In pairs, students answer: What is the first ingredient? How many ingredients can you not pronounce? Where does sugar first appear, under any of its names? What is the serving size, and is it realistic? A biscuit pack that lists 'per 2 biscuits' when everyone eats six is a maths lesson hiding in plain sight.
Step four: compare with the tray. The class then 'labels' their own microgreens: ingredients, seeds, water, light, care. One ingredient. Nothing hidden. The contrast lands without a single word of preaching.
Send the skill home: students audit one shelf of the family kitchen and report their most surprising find. Parents, in our experience, learn as much as the children.
