Lifelong Health and Wellness
Making Smart Choices as an Informed Consumer
Throughout this module, you have examined important nutritional principles related to things such as amino acids, vitamins, minerals, sugar, salt, fat, calories, and daily values. You also learned about the importance of evaluating current scientific research on nutrition so that you can make informed decisions about your health. In another part of this course, you learned about the decision-making process. Recall some of the steps you can follow when making and following through on important decisions.
- Determine the consequences of the decision.
- Think through all the possible outcomes of the decision.
- Seek advice.
- Make a decision.
- Take responsibility for the consequences.
In order to maintain lifelong health and wellness, you want to make sure to eat nutritious foods, and at times you will need to select a health or wellness product and discuss using it with your health care professional. For this assignment, you will apply your knowledge about nutrition and analyze scientific studies in order to make smart choices regarding a processed food product. You will also apply the same decision-making process to research the accuracy of health claims regarding a dietary supplement, such as a vitamin or mineral supplement in powder, pill, or liquid form.
To get started, you will first need to select a processed food product and a dietary supplement product that make health claims. You do not have to purchase the products, but you need to know the information on the packaging. Then, research the accuracy of those health claims by applying the knowledge you have learned in this module and analyzing scientific research studies related to the health claims. Some schools and public libraries provide students with
access to online databases of prominent scientific journals. Contact your course instructor if you need help locating these resources.
As you complete the assignment, please record your decision-making process in the Making Smart Choices Template provided. You will need to use resources outside of this course to complete this assignment, so please submit a Works Cited document with your assignment submission. If you need assistance, visit the Developmental Module for information on citing resources.
Once you have completed the assignment, please submit your work to the dropbox.
Once you have completed this module, please complete the module test.