Making Healthy Wraps in DT!

This week, we became chefs and food critics, all-in-one!

To begin our Design and Technology topic, we read a brief which was set for us by the Minister for School Lunches. He told us that children across the country have been unhappy with their school lunches and that the only protein that they are offered is egg! He suggested that children could have plain bread and water but had been told that this could be problematic for their health. He then said that a well-balanced wrap might be a good, healthy option for children in every school but he was unsure of which ingredients should be included.

We then re-visited our learning in science and spoke about a healthy, balanced meal. We discussed food groups such as proteins, carbohydrates (which we knew would be our wrap within our design), fruits and vegetables, and dairy. We came together as a class to discuss different foods which fit within these categories. We soon realised that cream might not be the best option within a wrap, as much as it is a diary product! We also had to consider a vegetarian option! We know that beans and chickpeas are a good source of protein for vegetarians and tried to think of ways that we could include these in our wraps.

In our books, we considered three of our own designs that we would like to make. We had to use one protein, one dairy product and a fruit or vegetable to go within our wrap. Some of us thought that mince might be nice, or chicken! Miss Robertson suggested falafel as an option for any vegetarians. We had so many fruits and veg to choose from! Avocado seems to be a class favourite, along with cucumber, tomatoes and lettuce.

On Tuesday, we had the chance to each make our very own wrap… however, this would then be cut into 4 pieces so that everyone could try different flavour combinations. We’ll come back to that soon, once we wrap our heads around the making process. We worked in four different groups, which each had different ingredients to combine within our wraps. We had egg, mayonnaise (or sour cream) and rocket as one option. Chicken, red pepper, rocket and sour cream (or mayonnaise). Ham, cheese and lettuce. Finally, we had falafel, hummus, red pepper and sour cream. We practiced our cutting skills and also had to consider the amounts of each ingredient to include so that we didn’t overload our wrap. We needed the flavour combinations to be perfect! Once we had all completed our wonderful wraps, we carefully cut them into four equal pieces so that we could complete our taste-test.

Before we went to the Creativity Room to make our wraps, we looked at how we would be evaluating our work. We had to consider:

• If the wrap met the design brief – was it a healthy wrap?
• It’s smell
• The taste!

We moved around to each taste station, beginning with considering the smell of the dish. I think most of us would agree that the egg station had the strongest scent! We then tried our creations! We then marked the wrap out of 5, with 1 being not particularly palatable or enjoyable and 5 being absolutely delicious. Lots of us really impressed our teachers with how brave we were with trying new foods, or foods that might not always be our favourites. Some of us were slightly less keen to try new foods. However, you will still see from our pictures, we had lots of happy children in our class that afternoon! In this activity, we realised during our discussion and evaluation that we all have different foods that we enjoy. We all like different textures and flavours so it would be extremely hard to choose just one healthy wrap for all of the children across the country. We do know, however, know how important a healthy and balanced diet is, as we still feel so knowledgeable from when Michelle came to speak to us a few weeks ago about her job as a nutritionist and personal trainer.

We really loved this opportunity to link and connect our knowledge and understanding of science to a Design and Technology activity. We would like to say a big thank you to Miss Robertson, Mrs Hope and Ms Portugal for helping us to make our wraps, and also for tidying up after us. You would not believe the mess that we managed to make!

Anyway, that’s a wrap!