A MANAGEABLE examination period is more than just balancing your study and break times. It’s also about how you fuel your body during this stressful period.
Robyn-Leigh Mentor, a nutrition expert, shared diet hacks and advice on eating healthy during a recent webinar for learners and parents, hosted by the South African College of Applied Psychology (SACAP).
The organisation held the online webinar to help pupils and parents prepare for the upcoming final exams.
Mentor said healthy eating, exercise and sleep were important during study periods.
“In order to ensure we consume a variety of balanced meals, planning is key. Research has shown the most common eating behaviours amongst students are: skipping of meals, a low intake of fruit, vegetables and dairy; and a high consumption of fats and sodium, which can be linked to processed food.
“The reason why you need to eat different types of food regularly, is because one type of food does not contain all the nutrients your body needs. In order to perform optimally, the body needs starchy foods (carbohydrates), protein, healthy fats as well as vitamins and minerals.
“ Therefore, to ensure that a learner’s body gets all the nutrients it requires, is to eat a variety of foods as often as possible, preferably at all meals and the best way to do this is through planning of meals.” she said.
Mentor said a simple diet hack to get a balanced meal was using the MyPlate model.
“It depicts how the five food groups can be incorporated into a meal. Simply put, you could choose from a list of affordable foods in each category and see how it can be assembled into a meal. For example: starch (pasta), protein (chickpeas), vegetable (broccoli). For a snack: dairy (yoghurt), fruit (naartjie).”
Mentor said there were things that pupils and parents could do to provide healthy meals on a budget. These included:
* Compile a grocery list
* Planning meals before doing grocery shopping so you can check for specials/ discounts.
* Compare prices when shopping (house brands/ generic tend to be cheaper).
* Purchase fresh produce which are in season.
* Prepare meats yourself - chicken strips, burgers, kebabs tends to be more costly when ready prepared
*Ready prepared meals tend to be more costly, higher in calories, fats and sodium – better to prepare the meals from scratch.
* Pack your meals to classes in order to prevent you from ordering food/ take out (saves money, time and calories).
* Leftovers can be frozen or recreated into another meal (cost saving and reduces waste).
To access recordings of both the learner and parent webinars visit the SACAP YouTube Channel here.
*The examinations were initially scheduled to start on November 1. This was recently amended to October 27 due to the Municipal elections which will take place on November 1. According to the revised time table, the finals will still wrap up on December 7.