Inspiration from McDonalds



Alright, so maybe I shouldn’t be outing myself as a more-frequent-than-I-should-be customer of McDonalds, but today’s visit was interesting for several reasons. Firstly, my order was taken by an old CW Jefferys student of mine who’s doing a paid co-op placement, so we got to catch up and talk about her plans after high school. Also, I learned that my Filet-o-Fish (pictured above) was made with MSC-certified sustainably-sourced wild Alaskan Pollock, which basically means that it’s a bit better for me than farmed fish, the fish lived decent lives and weren’t fed junk like GMO corn or soy. Also, all sorts of math can be done using the McD’s own nutritional information, not only to learn math concepts, but also to use the math to raise awareness of making informed decisions about the food students choose to eat.

For instance, have students create three meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner) that they would enjoy eating, and then calculate the percentage of daily intake for calories, fat, etc. according to Canada’s Food Guide. Then, have students create three healthier (and I do use that term loosely) meals from the list of McDonalds food items and see the difference in the percentage of caloric and nutritional intake. I’m quite sure that plenty of questions about what is/isn’t healthy will abound in this exercise, which is an important lesson in and of itself. I’ve always thought about trying something like this with my Grade 9s. Now that I’ve thought it through a bit more, sounds like it’s definitely worth doing next time around.

I knew going to McDonalds today was a good idea.