Research center offers school students workshops on healthy food

Educational activities organized by the Obesity and Comorbidities Research Center supply students from public schools with information about food and its implications for health.

By Noêmia Lopes, in Campinas

Agência FAPESP – A group of high-school students are seated in a circle playing a card game that resembles “Top Trumps”, except that instead of comparing car models or superheroes’ superpowers, they are talking about cards showing nutritional values for snacks of various kinds. How healthy are they? How much sugar, salt, fat, fiber and vitamins do they contain? What does this information mean? How do our choices of what we eat affect our health?

The contest is part of a series of workshops held every month since April 2014 at the Obesity and Comorbidities Research Center (OCRC), one of the Research, Innovation and Dissemination Centers (RIDCs) supported by FAPESP.

The meetings take place in the amphitheater and arenas of the School of Medical Sciences (FCM) at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in São Paulo State, Brazil, assembling on average 92 invitees (88 students and four teachers) from two public schools each month.

“We’re looking to show young people that a balanced diet helps prevent the emergence of diseases like diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity. Moreover, we want them to learn that science, and particularly food chemistry, isn’t found in books alone: it is a living concern and a permanent part of our lives,” said Ronaldo Aloise Pilli, OCRC’s head of education and knowledge diffusion, in an interview with Agência FAPESP.

The workshops begin with an introductory presentation delivered by a graduate student linked to OCRC’s researchers. The speaker at the latest event, held on September 11, was Vanessa Bóbbo, a PhD student at UNICAMP’s Nursing School.

“Adolescents typically associate care of the body with appearance,” Bóbbo said. “We want to draw their attention to the fact that from a very early age, what we eat also influences something much more important – our health and quality of life.”

The content of the presentations includes fun resources such as Tumblr images, animated GIFs and memes, but all this only serves as a trigger for in-depth discussion in the workshop itself.

“After we’ve said a few words about the composition of food items, with which students in this age group are already familiar, we talk about what to eat, when and how, the role of insulin in the human organism, what labels reveal, and the importance of physical exercise, among other things,” Bóbbo said.

The OCRC team also aims to have students pass the information on to their families and to encourage everyone close to them to adopt healthier habits. “Almost all have a relative or acquaintance with diabetes, high blood pressure or obesity,” Bóbbo said. “We try to bring these experiences into the discussion and recommend ways of getting them to change their habits.”

After the introductory presentation, the school students participate in four or five workshops, divided into groups that take turns to engage in different kinds of activities, also led by graduate students. In addition to the “Top Trumps” game involving nutrition, the activities focus on blood pressure, hardening of the arteries (atherosclerosis), heart attacks and strokes, body mass index (BMI), lean versus fat mass, diet and physical exercise. Professionals from UNICAMP’s Blood Center lead group activities relating to blood donations, antigens and antibodies.

Partnership with educators

The inspiration for the workshop model was an old project of the National Science & Technology Institute on Obesity & Diabetes (INCT-INOD), funded by FAPESP and the National Scientific & Technological Development Council (CNPq). “Until 2013, the institute’s activities targeted primary- and secondary-school students, but when OCRC kicked in and we took over the project, we prioritized schools committed to disseminating the knowledge acquired in workshops to other students so as to extend our outreach,” said Cristina Vidrich, a member of Pilli’s education and knowledge diffusion team at OCRC.

Today, there are public schools in Campinas that contact the OCRC team to schedule participation in the workshops. Initially, however, it was OCRC that began contacting the city’s school boards to find out which communities needed this kind of attention and scientific induction.

“At the moment, we’re working most intensely with three schools – Escola Estadual Barão Geraldo de Rezende, near UNICAMP; Escola Estadual Miguel Vicente Cury, about 15 km from the campus; and Escola Estadual Barão Ataliba Nogueira, about 13 km away,” Pilli said.

The team suggests that teachers at these schools reconcile the requirements of their curriculum with the content of the workshops as much as possible while also further developing and extending this content through new activities. According to Pilli, “it’s up to them to choose the age groups and classes that attend, as appropriate to the students’ learning needs.”

News steadily comes in about how teachers are using the workshop experience in the classroom. “We heard about a math teacher who encouraged his class to replicate a workshop on calculating BMI for other students at the same school who hadn’t come to UNICAMP. Also, a geography teacher partnered with an English teacher to investigate eating habits and the rise in obesity in English-speaking countries,” Vidrich said.

Joander Rodrigues, a physics teacher at Escola Estadual Miguel Vicente Cury, accompanied his students to the September 11 workshop. “They get the chance to absorb and multiply the content they have access to here,” he said. “Better still, they may very well start wanting to do science themselves, as undergraduates and researchers.”

According to Pilli, fueling this interest is one of OCRC’s main aims. “After all, why should students get interested in science unless it enchants them?” he asked.

The number of students and teachers who participated in OCRC’s workshops in 2014 totaled 848. In 2015, the number is expected to reach 880 by November.

The schools also take part in other activities offered from time to time, including visits to museums and university labs, trips to the National Energy & Materials Research Center (CNPEM), and practice in organizing science fairs.

Surprises and discoveries

Despite the ease with which students access information, Pilli and Vidrich note that they are still surprised when told how much sugar soft drinks contain and the amount of fat in cookies or that cereal bars and fruit juice cartons do not necessarily contain healthy ingredients. In addition, some surprises can add new choices to the menu.

In the last stage of each workshop, after all the information has been received, the students are invited to create a healthy snack, typically including salad and freshly squeezed juice, which is a long way from the chocolate cookies or French fries with soda so beloved by adolescents in everyday life.

“Today, I heard a kid  being all ecstatic about a sandwich he had made with tomato, carrot and lettuce. As for fruit juice, the students are usually concerned about sugar to begin with, but they end up being persuaded to try a natural juice with no added sugar,” said Carla Bueno, a PhD student at FCM who helps with the workshops as a nutritionist.

“It’s a matter of deconstructing preconceptions that have been around for years or even generations,” she explained. “When parents say ‘Eat your salad or you won’t get dessert,’ they create the perception that salad is nasty – the price you pay for being allowed to eat what you want, which is the sweet.”

Meanwhile, a student asks a key question in one group discussion: “But healthy food is expensive, right?” “It depends,” replies a member of the workshop team. For example, the couple of bucks spent on a bar of chocolate that you gobble up in a few seconds can also buy a package of oat flakes that lasts days. Bananas, apples and papayas are more affordable than kiwis, strawberries or passion fruit.

“We also focus on the kind of education that consists of undoing mistaken perceptions,” Pilli said. “There’s still a lot of confusion in all age groups about what healthy food really means. Some people think it means eating only diet products, but that’s unnecessary, except in specific cases. Others believe that soft drinks and chocolates don’t contain any salt, but you can see how much salt they do contain just by reading the label. We set out to clear up these misunderstandings in the minds of the students and teachers, as well as their families, if possible.”

For 15-year-old Emile Chiareli, the most surprising part was discovering how important it is to plan every meal. “I’ve always eaten whatever I feel like at the time, more or less randomly,” she said. “Now I intend to pay more attention to what and when I eat, morning, noon and night.”