Choose Health: Food, Fun, and Fitness Shop 4-H

Choose Health: Food, Fun, and Fitness (CHFFF) is an award-winning, research-based nutrition and fitness curriculum composed of six hands-on lessons for 8-12-year-olds (3rd-6th graders). Developed by Cornell University’s Division of Nutritional Sciences in collaboration with Cornell Cooperative Extension’s 4-H Youth Development Program, CHFFF uses experiential learning to teach healthy eating and active play, targeting behaviors research shows to be most important for preventing childhood obesity and chronic disease. Topics include replacing sweetened drinks with low-fat milk and water, eating more vegetables, fruits, and whole grains, eating fewer high-fat and high-sugar foods, and playing actively 60 minutes each day. CHFFF is aimed at a suggested group size of 10-12 children.

Each lesson includes interactive nutrition activities, food preparation, active games, a goal setting challenge, and a family newsletter. Posters, visual aids, scanned food packages, game pieces and instruction cards, and other teaching materials are all included. Save hours of prep time and buy this ready-to-use kit! Download the Kit Contents and Assembly Instructions here!

CHFFF supports the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and USDA’s MyPlate, and uses a dialogue approach for more effective retention and application of information and skills. CHFFF promotes positive behavior change, with significant improvements from pre to post education in vegetable and fruit consumption, sweetened drinks, reading nutrition labels, and other food and activity-related behaviors.

A unique characteristic of CHFFF is that it can be co-taught by teens participating in the Choose Health Action Teens (CHAT) partner program. For training resources, a webinar, and other Cornell CHAT program information, see Choose Health Action Teens (CHAT).

The CHFFF curriculum was first authored in 2011; this version is the 2015 revision.

Teaching a group? Make sure you purchase the Handouts Bundle as well! Includes the Family Newsletters, a Bread Recipe, the Breakfast Olympics Score Card, and the Celebration Certificate.

Interested in CHFFF in Spanish? Most of the curricula has been translated and is available electronically! Visit Cornell’s site to download the files.

Note: Instructions on how to order the Food Model Cards from the National Dairy Council are available here.

Are you interested in learning more about the curriculum, straight from the author and a 4-H educator? Watch a webinar all about the curriculum, available here.

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