Posted: March 11th, 2023

Dietary analysis

Assignment: To determine your nutrition status you are asked to keep track of your diet for four days. You can track more than this if you would like a deeper analysis. You are then going to compare your intake to the recommendations called Dietary Reference Intakes or DRIs for the three macronutrients and water intake. 

In MyFitnessPal, once you set up a brief profile, click on Food Intake to begin adding your foods.

You will recall all the foods and beverages you consume during four days. The days do not need to be consecutive, and one of the recall days should be on a weekend day. Be sure to accurately estimate the quantities of each food.  Enter all the foods and beverages as best you can into the tracker. 

A copy of DRI, dietary reference intake, or what is recommended for your age, sex, and weight appropriate for your age and gender accompanies this intake, and this is what you will compare your intake to.  You are comparing what you actually eat to what is recommended for you to be eating. It is not necessary to meet 100% of each DRI every day.  Your finished reflection will be a comparison of your intakes to the recommendations. While the pie charts and graphs are meaningful to you, you are using the results of the comparison between the DRI and YOUR intakes for your summary. 

Towson University

Dr. McFadden

HLTH 204 Nutrition

Dietary Analysis and Written Reflection (Paper)

Using the free app My Fitness Pal

You can use another tracker if you are currently tracking your food intake—see note below

Due Dates: You can begin this dietary recall anytime and track your food intake for as long as you wish. The assignment calls for a four-day recall. Of course, the longer the recall, the more accurate of a dietary picture you will get. Recall/tracking as demonstrated in class and reflective paper due by 2/26 by 11:59 p.m. to the link online under the Assignment Tab as shown in class.

Assignment: To determine your nutrition status you are asked to keep track of your diet for four days. You can track more than this if you would like a deeper analysis. You are then going to compare your intake to the recommendations called Dietary Reference Intakes or DRIs for the three macronutrients and water intake.

In MyFitnessPal, once you set up a brief profile, click on Food Intake to begin adding your foods.

You will recall all the foods and beverages you consume during four days. The days do not need to be consecutive, and one of the recall days should be on a weekend day. Be sure to accurately estimate the quantities of each food. Enter all the foods and beverages as best you can into the tracker.

A copy of DRI, dietary reference intake, or what is recommended for your age, sex, and weight appropriate for your age and gender accompanies this intake, and this is what you will compare your intake to. You are comparing what you
actually eat to what is
recommended for you to be eating. It is not necessary to meet 100% of each DRI every day. Your finished reflection will be a comparison of your intakes to the recommendations. While the pie charts and graphs are meaningful to you, you are using the results of the comparison between the DRI and YOUR intakes for your summary.

Here is what you will address in your analysis/refletion:

General Nutrition:

Comparing to your DRI, do your intakes meet recommendations for macronutrient—carbs, fats, proteins? Which groups are you consistently high or low in?

Do you meet the requirements for fiber intake—what is your daily intake in grams? How much water do you consume in a day?

Macronutrients:

How many grams of carbs do you consume daily? How does this compare to your daily recommended intake? How many grams of sugar do you consume?

Which foods do you think contained the highest amounts of carbs?

How many grams of fats were consumed for each day? How many grams of saturated fat and cholesterol did you consume? What three foods contained the highest levels of fat?

How many grams of protein do you consume daily? If you are over, why do you think this is so? What three foods provided the highest amount of protein?

Micronutrients

Compare your intake of the following to your recommended DRI values:

Sodium

You can reflect on more if your app provides that information.

Your analysis (Reflection) paper is due in the Bb link for the assignment by Sunday 2/26 by 11:59 p.m. You will save your food logs as a word document. Include your logs with your written summary.

If you already use a program or another food tracker—that’s fine too. Just be sure to include those logs. If you use your phone without an account, you may need to create an account so you can save from the website to upload to Bb.