Teacher's notes

Eat Smart, Play Smart is divided into 15 activity sessions, 8 looking at healthy eating and 7 considering play and activity (see the lesson plans link at the foot of this page). Each session has suggestions for classroom activities (for use by teachers at school or in after school clubs), plus take home material to support learning (including positive messages for parents). Photocopiable resource sheets are available.

The Eat Smart programme has been developed using the following criteria:

• Use specific positive messages, such as the promotion of fruit and vegetables; the promotion of starchy foods by encouraging children to eat healthy alternatives to high fat, high sugar snack foods; use teeth as a model linking diet to health.
• Use discreet messages – by default encouraging a decrease in high fat, high sugar snack foods (for example, replacing crisps with sandwiches or fruit as snack foods).
• Establish a simple definition of 'healthy' as it was found that children in this age group had a wide range of concepts of 'healthy'.

The lessons and activities have positive messages to promote a healthy lifestyle, such as encouraging children to eat breakfast and conveying the message 'we need all foods to keep us healthy – more of some, less of others'.

The Play Smart programme has been developed to encourage children to be more physically active in their everyday lives and to understand the benefits of being active. Children tend to think of activity as playing sports, so other ways of increasing activity in the home and at school are suggested here. Activities are fun, energetic and easy to follow.

This resource has been written in a flexible modular format that can be integrated into the curriculum. You may wish to use a number of modules at once, or spread them throughout a year. For example, you may wish to write the use of these materials into your Scheme of Work at the start of the school year, thereby ensuring that you are addressing diet and lifestyle issues. For further details, please refer to the curriculum links in the section 'Using Eat Smart, Play Smart in the curriculum'.

The incidence of overweight and obesity in the UK has increased dramatically in the last two decades, both in adults and children. An opportunity for the management and control of obesity lies in addressing the problem in childhood.

The school years are a good time to promote healthier lifestyles among young people. To encourage children to choose a healthy diet the Food Standards Agency commissioned five school-based research projects in different parts of the UK under a research and development programme entitled 'Food acceptability and choice'. These projects indicated that fun educational initiatives, such as lunchtime clubs, may help children make better nutritional choices.

One of these projects was a family-centred, school-based intervention for the prevention of obesity in primary school-aged children called Eat Smart, Play Smart.

The Eat Smart, Play Smart project aimed to develop a school-based family intervention programme to prevent obesity in children under 10 years of age. Interventions involving physical activity alone, nutrition education alone or a combination of the two approaches were piloted in primary schools in the Oxford area with 120 children aged 5 to 7 years (including a control group). They were delivered through lunchtime clubs in school.

Results showed that school-based interventions appear to be a suitable model for primary school children. A summary of the project is available at the link below to research project N09009.

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