Food Literacy: Smart Choices for Body and Mind

Food is fuel, and more

Every body system you studied depends on food. Your digestive system breaks it into nutrients, your circulatory system carries them, your muscles and brain use them, and your excretory system removes the wastes. Food also affects how you feel, how well you focus and how you connect with family and culture.

Food literacy means knowing how to choose, prepare and enjoy food that helps your body and mind.

Remember from Grade 4 Health

You learned about nutrients and Canada's Food Guide: fill half your plate with vegetables and fruits, a quarter with whole grain foods, a quarter with protein foods, and make water your drink of choice. The Food Guide also gives habits: be mindful of your eating, cook more often, enjoy your food, eat meals with others, use food labels, and be aware of food marketing.

Now you'll use these skills to make decisions, and see how food connects to both physical and mental health.

Food and your body systems

• Vegetables, fruits and whole grains have fibre, which helps the digestive system move food along.
• Protein foods (beans, lentils, nuts, fish, eggs, meat, milk products) help build and repair muscles.
• Calcium (in milk, fortified soy drinks, some leafy greens) helps keep bones strong.
• Iron (in meat, beans, leafy greens) helps red blood cells carry oxygen.
• Water helps the kidneys remove wastes and helps you stay cool.
• Too much salt (sodium) over time can raise blood pressure, which makes the heart work harder.
• Too much added sugar can lead to tooth decay and, over time, other health problems.

Food and your mind

• Regular meals and snacks give your brain steady energy, which helps you focus and stay calm. Feeling "hangry" is real!
• Eating with family and friends helps people feel connected.
• Cooking and sharing cultural and traditional foods connects us to our families and communities.

Reading a Nutrition Facts table

1. Serving size: all the numbers are for this amount. If you eat twice as much, you get twice as much of everything.
2. % Daily Value (% DV): 5% or less is a little, 15% or more is a lot.
3. Look for more of: fibre, calcium, iron, potassium. Look for less of: sodium, sugars, saturated fat.
4. Ingredient list: ingredients are listed from most to least. If sugar is first, the food has more sugar than anything else.

Highly processed foods often have more sodium, sugars or saturated fat. The Food Guide suggests limiting them.

Canada's rules now require many packaged foods that are high in sodium, sugars or saturated fat to show a "High in" symbol with a magnifying glass on the front of the package.

Food, culture and community

Food traditions are part of who we are. Many First Nations, Métis and Inuit families harvest and share traditional foods, such as fish, wild game, berries and wild rice. Inuit call traditional foods like Arctic char, caribou and seal country food. Hunting, fishing and gathering are active, connect people to the land, and sharing the harvest strengthens community.

In your family, think about which foods you share at holidays such as Thanksgiving, Lunar New Year, Eid, Diwali or Hanukkah, and who taught you to make them.