Top Grub : The fun food game

How to play

Top Grub is based on the popular children’s card game Top Trumps®. The game is a fun way to learn about the nutritional content of food.

Two or more people can play. Shuffle and deal out the cards face down dividing the cards equally between players (keeping any extra cards in a central pool). The aim of the game is to win all the cards.

Each card has a red, amber or green dot based on the Food Standard Agency’s (FSA) nutrient profiling model. It is important to remember that for red items, the lowest value wins and for green items the highest value wins. If a card wins it is not necessarily a healthier food card but the person who knows the cards well is more likely to win.

The player to the dealer’s left starts by reading out an item from the top card (e.g. Fish Fingers- Protein 13.2 g). The other players then read out the value of the same item (i.e. Protein) from their top card. Since protein is a green item, the player with the highest value wins and gets all the played cards including their own and keeps them at the bottom of their pile. If a red item is called (e.g. Baked potato - Sugar 1.2 g), the winner for the round is the person with the card that has the lowest value for that item on their top card.

The winner gets to start the next round by choosing an item from their next card. If 2 or more cards show the same best value, then all the cards are placed in the middle and the same player chooses again from the next card. The winner of the next round takes the cards in the middle as well. The person with all the cards at the end is the winner.

There is one question on the back of each card in the pack with the correct answer highlighted in green. When only 2 players are left, the player who has only 1 card and is about to lose turns his card over and asks the other player with the most cards the question. If the other player (who has the most cards) gets the answer wrong, the losing player then wins the game by getting all the other player’s cards. This adds an exciting twist to the finish of the game.

Another Way to Play

The cards are distributed as before and the rules for winning or losing cards are the same i.e. the best value wins (highest for green items and lowest for red items).

Each card has a red, amber or green dot on the top right hand corner. The red dot means the card is worth minus 2 (-2), the amber is plus 1 (+1) and the green is plus 2 (+2) points. The player with the highest score at the end of the game wins.

The players aim to get rid of their red cards and collect more green cards throughout play.
So the players may select nutritional values which help them to lose red dot cards and win amber or green dot cards.

When one of the players finishes their cards, the game ends and the other players add up their total score for the cards they have. The player with the highest score wins.

Example: Player 1 has apple (+2), ice lolly (+1) and fruit yogurt (+1) so the total = plus 4. Player 2 has chocolate (-2), choc chip cookie (-2) and baked potato (+2) so total score= minus 2. Player 3 has finished all the cards so total score is zero. In this example player 1 wins because he/she has the highest total score, Player 3 is second and Player 2 is third.

The red dot cards are foods to be eaten in small amounts, amber dot cards are foods to be eaten in moderation and the green dot cards are foods that are good to eat often.