Food Journal Analysis #1 - Essay Example

I am writing an analysis about the food Ive eaten for a specific day. Ive inserted everything Id eaten that day to a special calculator in a website called My Pyramid Tracker, which calculates how much food Ive eaten, divided into the five different food groups, and the amounts of ingredients consumed.These are the answers for the questions of this analysis:A. I feel rather good about my dietary intake for the day I recorded. Most of what I ate was healthy food or food which isnt fattening or full of cholesterol.

This includes 1 herbal tea, 6 biscuits made of full wheat, 2 slices of bread, 2 pieces of fish, 1 lettuce salad with assorted vegetables, 1 apple, 1 cup of grapes and soup. As for the rest of the food, which is only 1 yoo-hoo chocolate and 1 plain milk chocolate- the former is good for the body because it provides calcium, and was also the only dairy product I ate during the day, and the latter belongs to the fats, oils and sweets group, which is permissible to eat occasionally. Seeing as how I only ate one bar, the consumption of it is also alright. B. I did not consume the minimum number of servings for each of the food groups.

In fact, that was the case in four of the five groups. I had the perfect amount of fruit, 2 cups per day, and a decent amount of grain, 5.1 oz equivalent, when the recommended amount is 7. However, as far as the vegetable, milk and meat and beans groups, I miserably failed to reach the minimum amount: I had 1.3 cups equivalent of vegetables out of the 3 recommended- a bit less than a half; I had 2.1 oz equivalent out of 6 recommended- about a third; and I had 0.2 cup equivalent of milk out of 3 recommended- one-fifteenth of the recommended portion.C. I had no groups overrepresented in my daily dietary intake.

However, I had 3 groups seriously underrepresented and 1 only mildly underrepresented. The reasons for this are simply because I didnt have enough foods of those groups- I didnt have enough vegetables because I ate a small portion of salad; I needed to consume a little more grain, which I could have done by eating another slice of bread or perhaps a small portion of corn flakes; I didnt nearly have enough dairy products, which I could have solved by drinking another glass or too of yoo-hoo chocolate and maybe eating some cheese with the bread; and I didnt have enough meat and beans, which I could have by eating some chicken or turkey or even more fish, and perhaps some beans too.D. My diet provided a certain variety of foods.

I consumed foods from all food groups, but in very different quantities. I needed to consume much more food from the milk food group, the meat and beans group and the vegetable group, as well as having a bit more of the grain group, whereas I had the perfect amount of the fruit group. This could have been solved had I eaten various products made of dairy, another type of grain food such as corn flakes, a larger portion of salad, and another type of meat or some more of the fish I ate. In conclusion, although Ive thought my dietary intake was good and healthy, I found out that although Ive eaten mostly healthy food, the amounts of nearly all food groups were insufficient, and I didnt balance the foods well in terms of which food group to consume more and which to consume less.

This analysis has certainly helped me to better realize what and how much I need to eat.