8 mistakes learners make with health and lifestyle, each one named and explained.
What you eat, drink, breathe and do changes how the body works, and the effects add up over years.
You sort alcohol and caffeine into the not a drug column, keeping the word for illegal substances only.
Drug is used in everyday speech to mean illegal, and alcohol is sold in supermarkets.
Question. Which of these are drugs?
A common answer. Only the illegal ones
The answer. Alcohol, caffeine and nicotine are all drugs, and so are medicines
Why. A drug is any substance that changes how the body works.
Sort by effect on the body, not by whether a shop can sell it.
You say an energy drink gives the body energy, when the alertness comes from caffeine and the energy itself comes from the sugar, the same as from any sugary drink.
The can says energy, and you do feel different within minutes, so the label seems confirmed.
Question. Why does an energy drink make you feel more awake?
A common answer. It gives your body extra energy
The answer. Caffeine makes you feel more awake, and the sugar is the energy, the same as in any sugary drink
Why. Energy is released from food in respiration. A stimulant only changes how tired you feel.
Separate what a substance does to your senses from what it does to your cells.
You mark a balanced diet as one with no fat in it at all.
Fat is the word on every warning label, and the healthiest looking foods are often the ones advertised as fat free.
Question. A balanced diet
A common answer. Contains no fat
The answer. Contains some fat, mostly unsaturated
Why. Fat carries some vitamins, insulates the body and stores energy.
Balanced means the right amount of each, never none of one.
You explain that an athlete who stops training turns their muscle into fat.
The change in shape is real and happens in the same place on the body, so one tissue seems to have become the other.
Question. An athlete stops training for a year
A common answer. The muscle turns into fat
The answer. The muscle gets smaller from disuse, and fat is stored because the eating did not change
Why. They are two different tissues. Neither can become the other.
Describe each tissue separately and the story stays true.
You say eating more protein builds muscle, with no exercise in the answer.
Protein is named as the nutrient for growth and repair, and every protein product is sold beside a picture of a muscle.
Question. How does someone build muscle?
A common answer. By eating more protein
The answer. By exercising the muscle, with enough protein in the diet to repair it
Why. Protein is the building material. Exercise is what asks for the building.
Name both the trigger and the material when you explain growth.
You list the harm from smoking as lung damage, with nothing about the heart or the blood.
The lungs are where the smoke goes, and the pictures on the packet are of lungs.
Question. What does smoking damage?
A common answer. The lungs
The answer. The lungs, and the heart and blood vessels, because carbon monoxide and nicotine reach every part
Why. What enters the blood at the lungs travels everywhere the blood goes.
Follow the substance into the blood, then ask where the blood goes.
You judge how much fat a run burned by how much you sweated.
Both go up with effort, and the weight on the scales really does drop straight after exercise.
Question. Weighing less straight after a run
A common answer. That is the fat you burned
The answer. That is mostly water lost as sweat, and it comes back when you drink
Why. Sweating cools you down. Fat is used up in respiration, which you cannot see.
Judge exercise by what you did, not by how wet your shirt is.
You list vitamins alongside carbohydrates and fats as something the body burns for energy.
Vitamin tablets are sold with promises of energy, and vitamins do sit in the same list of nutrients as the foods that are burned.
Question. Which nutrient does the body use for energy?
A common answer. Vitamins
The answer. Carbohydrates first, then fats
Why. Vitamins are needed in tiny amounts to make reactions work, not to be burned.
Ask whether the nutrient is fuel or a tool. Vitamins are tools.
WAJD spots these patterns in your child's answers and names the one behind their wrong answers, instead of just marking them wrong.