Report on nutrition education
DIC Healthcare is engaged in a range of activities to contribute to communities and society.ー Supirulina nutrition learning workshop
Since 2010, DIC Healthcare has run nutrition education classes for elementary school students based on a nutrition education program created by DIC Healthcare that features Spirulina.This is just part of our efforts to interact with local communities and contribute to children’s education.The program uses the many types of snacks and sweets that children love to eat as a way of taking a closer look at the “colorants that brighten up confectionery”, starting with having the children search for color-related words on the ingredients label.
The children learn that the words they found are called colorants, and then use microscopes and other experiments to discover for themselves about how these colorants are made, principally looking at the plant-derived blue colorant made from Spirulina. The children then also learn about how Spirulina came into existence, where it grows in the wild and what nutrients it contains. The content of the program sets out to foster a broad interest and spirit of inquiry into food and nutrition, even covering the Spirulina Project supported by the DIC Group and the potential uses of Spirulina in outer space.
Theme: Discover the secrets hidden in the color of sweets!
- Search for which ingredients in sweets relate to color!
- Find out what really makes the blue color!
- Discover Spirulina’s true identity!
- Look up more information on colors
- Reveal the secrets hidden in Spirulina’s colors!
- The future made possible by Spirulina
- Sharing what the workshop inspired you to learn more about
[Survey result 1]: Was the teacher’s lesson interesting?
[Survey result 2]: What was the most memorable?
ーParticipant feedback and topics for future learning
- I realized that Spirulina is amazing. Now I want to find out why Spirulina is shaped like a coiled spring.
- I want to know if you can make juice from Spirulina.
- They can make three colors from Spirulina at the moment. I wonder if it’s possible to make even more colors.
- I want to look into and learn more about the different colors used in sweets and snacks.
- I learned that the way sweets are colored can influence whether you want to eat them or not. I wouldn’t have guessed that Spirulina has been around for 3 billion years.
- I was so amazed because I never knew that Spirulina made oxygen. I want to look up information about what else contains Spirulina. I was stunned to hear how many snacks and sweets contains Spirulina.
- The teacher was easy to understand, and even though I wasn’t very interested in science experiments, I like them a bit more now. I want to try some easy experiments at home too. The workshop was easy to understand and fun. It was doubly enjoyable because the teacher was so interesting.