Science Projects for Seventh Grade: Is Breakfast Really the Most Important Meal of the Day?

Lesson Purpose:

This project can be used when teaching about how food gives us energy. It is also a great project to use when demonstrating how to test a person's theory. The theory is that "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day". The project provides a way to find out if this theory is correct or incorrect.

Teach:

Discuss with your students some reasons that breakfast may really be the most important meal of the day. One reason is that a person's sugar level drops during the night when food is not consumed. This level must be brought back up

in the morning by food consumption. Teach students about the food guide pyramid and ask them if they think they can eat from all of the food groups on the pyramid without having anything to eat at breakfast time.

Materials:

1. 10 Volunteers for One Week
2. Questionnaire
3. Notebooks
4. Pencils

Procedure:

1. Discuss who the volunteers for this project are going to be. You will need ten people to eat a nutritious breakfast for one whole week and then go without breakfast for one whole week. It is possible that your students could volunteer to do this, but you would then need the consent of their parents. Consent would be needed for any child who wants to skip breakfast for a week because, medical problems can arise from inadequate nutrition intake. Any child with diabetes should not be considered for this project. Otherwise, enlist individuals outside of the classroom and monitor intake.
2. Develop a questionnaire for each of the ten volunteers. Ask them to record how they are feeling after they eat breakfast or skip breakfast, are they getting hungry or are they staying full? How is their concentration during the day? Are they getting tired or are they full of energy? Have the class decide on some questions together and print them out for the volunteers.
3. Have students record information about this experiment into their notebooks. Have them create a hypothesis, or an educated guess, as to what could happen to the volunteers the week they eat a nutritious breakfast and the week that they skip breakfast.
4. Collect the questionnaire's from the volunteers and review them with the class.

Review:

Were any of the student's hypothesis correct? Have the students share what they thought would happen verses what really happened. Then have them decide if breakfast really is the most important meal of the day.