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Reviewed Site: Smart-Mouth

Site Content Area: The Center for Science in the Public Interest is the parent company for this site which “encourages Congress to pass new nutrition and food-safety laws, encourages government agencies to sponsor nutrition campaigns, and urges food companies to change the way they make, sell, and advertise food to make food safer and to make it easier for people to eat well and be more physically active.” They have done a lot of work in the industry such as getting a law passed that all packaged foods must have nutrition facts on the labels, and alcoholic beverages must have a warning label on them; they publicized nutrition facts about restaurant food creating a change in food choices by consumers; and encouraged the government to reduce the risk of food poisoning.

Site Requirements/Access:

This site is built with some older coding and a lot of JavaScript, so most everyone should not have any challenges viewing the site. If you have your pop-up settings turned off, you’ll need to turn them back on since a lot of the site is dependant upon pop-up screens. There are a great number of images so be sure you’ve checked your settings to allow images. The front page did take a little time to download using a high-speed internet connection, so be patient. If you want to view the video clips, you do need a player. The site recommends RealPlayer or Windows Media Player.

Overview:

This site does have a lot of good information which can be used with many different ages, as well as a teacher resource for curriculum building. There are links which will help you to navigate to other resources, there are a few informational pieces to help students learn important facts without being too dull, there are a few quick games students can play for understanding, and there is enough information, resources, and external links that either you or your students can use for research purposes.

The Look:

They do still sport an entry page, which is old-school, but not to worry, just click on the enter link and be taken to the front page without delay. The front page has a white background, which is considered blasé’ these days, but it does do a good job offsetting all the colors used in the imagery. The page itself is about a scroll and a half long with the bottom focusing on a disclaimer, contact information, and the awards they have earned. The top half is where you really want to focus your attention. The imagery is creative, colorful, and interesting; however you do need to look for the verbiage to find the navigation. It appears to be one image, however it is really made up of quite a few individual images coded together to look like one. The navigation is embedded in each image as a roll-over and clickable link. The rollover will give you more details about that section or page at the top of the image, under the Smart-Mouth label. If you’re not looking for it, you will surely miss that, as I did on my initial review.

Features of the Site:

Links: this will, of course, bring you to their links page, offering a variety of external resources with the majority of links to Nutrition Action Health Letter.  There are a few broken links and since they don’t list the source, you cannot do a search for the site via a search engine.  I did visit all the links and several of them are kinds neat, but you’ll have to check those out yourself and make the determination if they will work for you and your students.

Bite Back: is the page where you can “take action” by joining their action network, which you can sign-up for them to send you action alerts; helps you find the elected official for your area and submit a letter of concern to him/her; or you can click on the various links which will either give you a brief explanation of that topic, but it is no longer active, or it will open a new page with a detailed article about the topic with sample letters you can send from the site or copy and paste into another email or WORD document for snail-mail.  About halfway down the page is a list of current campaigns and messages from the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Choose UR Chews Before clicking on this link, be sure to allow the front page to completely load and ensure your pop-up blocker allows this site or you will be taken to a blank page, not very fun!  Once this page pops up, it gives the directions on the top in red, hard to miss, with the categories of food choices under that, and the fat/cal-o-meter to the right side.  The idea is for you to select the foods you normally eat under each category and see how they measure on the fat and calorie meters.  The two meters have cute little diagrams indicating if you’re doing ok, need to be concerned, or are way off the mark.  I played several times adding different combinations together to see what would happen and it was amazing how the meters changed.  Within the categories, is does list several chain restaurants and specific menu items, which is great since ach one does cook their food differently.  If you like Fettuccini Alfredo, get over it cuz it will take you right off the meters and it is so bad for you, the site actually gives you a food alternative and suggests you read and article about saturated fats!  Overall, this section was fun to see what different foods do to your meters, but would also be a good place for students to learn how to meal plan effectively.

About CSPI: when clicking on this link, you will be taken to the page with information about who they are, what they have accomplished, and why they have formed this organization.  It is pretty straightforward, nothing too dramatic here, but always nice to hear where it all came from and why.

Articles & Recipes: This page needs a little rethinking as they waste the entire content area with one sentence instructing you to use the left side navigation to click on a recipe or article.  They could have done a better job planning here, used their page more effectively, and not used the old-fashion scroll bar in the middle of the page.  Once you get past the inefficient use of space and poor coding, you’ll find the recipes are easy to follow, and include all the tools you will need.  Do take notice that they use alternatives to sugar, salt, and fat for example, the banana bread recipe calls for honey not sugar.  For those of you who are watching your sugar in-take, want a healthy alternative, or are diabetic, these are right up your alley.
There are only seven articles available to read.  They are short and to the point, which is great for keeping the attention of students, OK, and me too!  You can get them in a printable format if you want to share them with your classes but don’t have internet access for all the students at one time.  If you want more information about a given topic, they do list a few more articles you can link to and read.

Video Clips: My first experience with the section was not good.  The video clip did not play in the Windows Media Player.  It opened a very small window with an image of the player but with no functionality.  I then clicked on several parts of the image to see if that would do the trick, but unfortunately it only brought me to the Nutrition Action Health Letter and it would not allow me to enlarge the small window either.  I then chose the RealPlayer option and it worked just fine.  They only list three video clips, the first Fatty Foods make Fatty Blood, a 35-second clip which lost me in the first three seconds, as it reminded me of the old movies the teachers played in school on the 9mm rolling film; you remember, the ones where the voiceover is a monotone, deep voice, droning on about who knows what since you tuned them out.  Definitely not even worth a look-see!  The second clip, The Health Food That’s Not, a 31-second clip, about switching to 1% milk.  It is very elementary-ish, the graphics are not that good, and I don’t know, I just didn’t like it.  The third clip, Heart Vandal, a 13-second clip, about feeling “sluggish” made in Claymation, and definitely for lower elementary students.  Overall, the video clips were a waste of time, not worth your time, and your students could probably do a better job making a video about any of the nutrition subjects on this site or other topics you feel are important for them to know.

Feed the Face: Again, you need to ensure the front page is completely loaded or you’ll get the dreaded blank page!  Similar to “Wheel-of-Fortune” the visitor reads the question listed on the top and then tries to guess what the answer is by selecting letters for the blank spots.  There is an option where you can fill-in the complete answer if you know it; it does work throughout the entire game, so you can complete that at any time.  The questions seem random although they are related to the content of the site, and are a tad challenging.  I was unable to guess any of the answers by just reading the questions, however using logic such as choosing more common letters first, will help to decode the answer.  You get six guesses and it will tell you how many guesses you have left as well as remove letters from the selection area after you chose them.  Once you complete the puzzle, it brings you to another page giving positive feedback for getting the answer correct, has a quick fact, and the option to play again.  At first I didn’t notice, then I wanted to see what would happen if you don’t get the correct answer, well with each incorrect letter selected the image to the left starts to breakdown until it turns into a skeleton, which I found amusing.  The one nice thing is that it will take you to the quick fact even if you don’t get the correct answer.  If you have seen the same question previously, there is an option to request a different question.  No score is kept and there is no printout available at the end, so you really could not use it to assess student knowledge, but could be used as a way to review.  I’m sure you are all creative enough to think of many ways to incorporate this into your lessons.

Trust Gus: Gus is a shady character that you cannot always trust to tell the truth.  He makes all kinds of statements and tries hard to sell them as truths.  Your mission is to determine when he is lying and when he is telling the truth.  They give you different statements, some of which are tricky, about different food choice, advertising, and deals, then you select if Gus is telling the truth or if he is lying by clicking on the button of choice.  In either case, you get a new screen with the answer and a little information about that particular topic.  As an adult, many of the questions had obvious answers, but for students that may not be true.  The one that grossed me out was the tidbit about smearing hamburgers with Vaseline and using hair tonic as milk (in cereal), talk about disgusting!  This section would be perfect to use when teaching students about false advertising as well as comparing nutrition facts from various foods.  I did get sick of the first sentence in each answer, but did play until I was sure I had seen every question, so I’m giving this section a thumbs-up!

Snacktoids: I was hoping this would be another game feature on the site but was sadly disappointed.  It is only a pop-up window with straight facts, nothing too exciting here, although after a closer look, the facts are quite intriguing.  There is a lot of common sense information, but there are some facts worthy of sharing with your students.  If you let them explore and discover them, they will be more likely to retain the information and use it in their daily lives.

Tell-A-Friend: this is their way of promoting their site and getting more folks to visit it.  They state very clearly that they do not collect the information and even list their privacy policy.  For further details or concerns, do read their policy thoroughly.

Conclusion:

With each review, I wonder whether the site is going to be worthy of your time (and mine), and have doubts about if it can fit into the curriculum. I often hesitate about submitting a review or recommending a site, but then find myself looking for the positive things we can get from each site. There are sites that I have found to be absolutely tremendous, could spend hours there; there are others that I won’t even review because they are so bad; and then there are ones like this site, there is some good information, descent activities, and may work for some teachers, but do not fall into the super star category. Depending on what level you teach, what you are looking to do with the site, and how you can incorporate it into your lessons, this site might be very useful for you and could provide just the right niche for what you are looking to accomplish. So, basically, don’t write off this site just yet; give it a look-see yourself before making up your mind whether it is worthy or not. As always, happy surfing and I look forward to hearing how you were able to utilize this site!