At the start of November, students enrolled in healthy living began their dieting and nutrition unit to help gather important information about different diets and the pros and cons of them. In Ms. Donley’s class, the FAD Diet commercial, a two day long project, was introduced to the students to further their knowledge and understanding of the dangers of fad diets, while also having fun and unleashing their creativity in a group of people.

The Fad Dieting commercial project consists of information learned from the dieting unit compiled into a two to three minute long video about a diet they decided to research about. The videos were created as a false advertisement to help “sell” the diet to the viewers.

“A fad diet is basically a diet that becomes popular, sort of like a trend, for a short amount of time,” sophomore Ruby Hinsley said. “They usually advertise for quick weight loss and health benefits while they are actually extremely unhealthy and can lead to a plethora of different problems.”

Before recording, students had to plan out what the commercial would look like on a sheet, along with the statistics of their set diet. With the collected data and valuable information they received, they had to present several different things about the diets and made sure they had scholarly sources to back up the information. Once students finished the planning sheet they were free to begin recording. 

Both the information learned in the two weeks prior and the actual commercials help bring awareness to the issues of eating disorders and aid people who need to learn more about a specific diet before trying it. 

“This has definitely become one of my favorite things they turn in because of how much they enjoy it while also seeing how much they learn from it,” Healthy Living teacher Eliza Donley said. “In today’s day and age, social media is the majority of peoples main news source and that can come with some costs. This project allows students to spread awareness about the false information that some diets online may consist of.”

By the end of the video, students had the opportunity to give their input and honest opinion of the project.

“I think this is just a fun way of gathering and presenting information,” sophomore McKenna Carroll said. “We learn things about these diets that we may not have learned if we had just listened to social media and people around us.”

The end of the project concluded with everyone watching the different commercials and a winning group who was rewarded with a treat from Ms. Donley.