Activity 2: Let's Eat Pizza!

You know that if you don't eat, you won't have an energy! If you don't eat, you just don't feel well! Our bodies need fuel just like a car needs to be filled with gasoline in order to run. We saw in Activity 1 that Fats, Carbohydrate, and Protein supply energy to your body. You decide for dinner that you would like to have one or maybe two pieces of pizza. What fuel are you giving your body? Here is the Nutrition Label from a deep dish pizza. How do we interpret this information?

Note: All of the addition, subtractions, multiplications, and divisions in this investigation should be done by hand. Round your answers. We will use the TI-73 to collect the data in lists so that later, in Activity 3 when we analyze an entire meal, we will not have to do many calculations by hand!

In the Warm Up Activity, you found that the Food and Drug Administration, FDA, has set up guidelines for eating for health. We are going to follow the energy nutrients, fats, carbohydrate, and protein. Notice that there are more categories listed on the label.

1. If we are going to use the information on the label, we need to know how much food the label is describing. What is the serving size given on the label? The pizza is circular. Draw a circle on your paper and shade in one serving size.
2. Make a copy of Table 1 below on your paper or in your word processor. Fill in columns A and B. Use the Nutrition Label to find the information.

	A	B	C	D	E
	Pizza (g)	Calories/gram	Pizza Calories	Recommended Daily Calories	Calories Left for the Day
Fat
Carbohydrate
Protein

Table 1
3. Using the information in column A and B, calculate the Pizza Calories for each energy nutrient. What operation did you use? Write the math! Write an explanation of what you computed.
4. We are going to assume that we should eat 2000 Calories per day. (Please check with Counting Calories (PDF file) to see what is recommended for you!) The FDA recommends the following percentages for the breakdown of a 2000 Calorie eating plan.

30% - Fat     60% - Carbohydrate     10% - Protein

Using this information fill in column D. Write the math! Write an explanation of how you did the calculations.

5. What columns can you used to fill in column E? Write an explanation of what you did to fill in column E.
6. What are we going to investigate? The FDA says that you should pick your calories for the day using the following breakdown: 30% - Fat, 60% - Carbohydrate , 10% - Protein.

Is the nutrition in the food you eat balanced in this way?
Let's investigate. Click here to go to Part 2 of Activity 2!

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Copyright 1998 by Margo Lynn Mankus