Your Challenge
Fast food restaurants now offer healthier options.
In response to pressure from consumers and public health experts, fast food restaurants have begun offering healthier options in recent years. Kids' meals increasingly contain apple or orange slices instead of French fries; milk or 100% juice rather than soda; and side dishes like yogurt or string cheese. But despite this progress, many public health experts feel that fast food restaurants could still do better.
Your challenge for the remainder of the lesson is to use the engineering design process to develop and market a healthy fast food children's meal.
Your children's meal should:
- be "fast food": able to be prepared in 10 minutes or less
- contain healthy foods from each of the five food groups
- provide about one-third of the daily recommended calories for a 4- to 8-year-old
- be cost effective to make-cost less than $6 per meal
- be tasty and appealing
- feature attractive and functional packaging
Teacher Note
Go over the criteria for the challenge and make sure that your students understand each point.
Essential Questions
- How can the engineering design process be used to develop solutions to real-world problems?
