About Top Chomps
"Top Chomps was born out of..... "
In working with Bristol schools we discovered that there was a discrepancy between what children thought they understand about healthy eating and the 5-a-day message and what they actually knew.
For example….
What constitutes a portion for the 5-a-day?
Why do we need to eat 5-a-day?
What is fibre?
What are nutrients?
Top Chomps was developed!
Over 300 children in Years 3-6 played the cards and completed questionnaires before and after activities. When asked whether they knew what healthy eating was, most children who responded to our pre-play surveys said that they did. (90.5%)
When asked whether they knew what a portion of fruit and vegetables consisted of (44.9% said yes)
In a post survey, when asked whether ‘they knew what healthy eating was’, the figure went down to 76% indicating that they realised there was more to learn. Interestingly, 70.8% now reported they had a better idea of what constituted a portion of fruit and vegetables and were able to explain that a handful was roughly equal to a portion. They also remembered key health messages from the cards.
Cards are interchangeable between the fruit and vegetable sets. We have included frozen, tinned and dried fruits and vegetables in our selection to encourage discussion about different sources and methods of preservation.
Top Chomps sponsors
This exciting new edition of the Top Chomps cards has been sponsored by Mack and DGM Growers. They’re major fresh produce suppliers in the UK and keen to support people who are working to help children eat more healthily.
Learning Outcomes
- To understand that food is a basic requirement of life and that a variety of food is needed to grow, be active and maintain health
- To understand that we need to eat a balanced diet to keep us healthy
- To understand there are no good or bad foods; it’s all about moderation and balance
- To recognise that different fruits and vegetables contain essential elements to healthy growth and nutrition
- To adopt positive attitudes to eating fruit and vegetables
- To recognise the need to eat five or more portions a day
- To recognise that fruit and vegetables are an essential part of the Eatwell Plate
- To be able to identify a portion of fruit or vegetables
- To know that eating different colours of fruits and vegetables gives us the variety of micronutrients that we need for a healthy lifestyle
Card information
The packs each contain 44 high quality plastic coated cards which have been developed in collaboration with Frescagroup.
The data on the cards is derived from McCance and Widdowson’s Composition of Foods integrated dataset.
Photographs on the cards are courtesy of ThinkVegetables.co.uk, Shutterstock and iStock.
Health messages on the cards were created by Sharon Sexton (Transforming School Meals Dietitian – Bristol City Council) and Rachel Cooke (Food in Schools Dietitian – Healthy Schools).
Artwork and layout by Hurricane Design
Very pleased to start 2017 with a win with Theo Paphitis and his Small Business Sunday initiative #SBS