Many of the students I have worked with in health literacy classes are refugees and immigrants for whom the idea of a food pyramid is completely new. Unfortunately, the new food pyramid fails to make its messages clear. When talking to these students about relative amounts of food from each group, I prefer to use pie charts like the one pictured here. I project the image on the wall. Then I have students write each food they ate at their last meal on a post-it (one food item per post-it and for true beginners, I encourage pictures) and then stick each note onto the projected image in the correct food group. I revisit this idea when we plan our pot lucks. Students write and post the dishes they intend to bring the week beforehand. Then we work as a group to determine if we have a healthy mix of foods and make adjustments. We also discuss how we would change the mix of foods for a group of diabetics or for a group with other chronic diseases we have discussed in class.
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