Spice of Life Lecture 6 Introduction to Food and Nutrition s1

Spice of Life Class 18 – Introduction to Food and Nutrition

I. Outline

A. Overview B. USDA Guidelines C. Assessing Your Diet Using MyPyramid.Gov

II. USDA Guidelines

A. General Considerations III. Today’s Activity: Food Pyramid Analysis

A. Part I: Are you regularly meeting your dietary guidelines?

1. Go to http://www.mypyramid.gov. 2. Click on “My Pyramid Tracker” 3. Scroll to the bottom of the page, and click on “New User Registration.” Register so you can use all of the site’s features. 4. Enter your information (Age, gender, the date is the date of the first day you filled out a complete food diary for this class, your height and your weight). 5. Click on save today’s changes. 6. Proceed to the food intake page. 7. Now enter all of food that you ate on the first day of your food diary by writing the name of the food into the ‘Enter Food Item’ box, and clicking on search. Choose the closest match from the resulting list of choices, and click on ‘add’. Don’t worry if you can’t find your exact food. For now, keep trying until you come close, and then enter that food. If you know you have eaten a food more than once during your diary week, make it a frequently used food. 8. Once you have entered all of your food for the day, click on ‘select quantity’, and enter your serving size and number of servings (for example, if you drank ½ cup of milk, you would enter a 1 cup serving, and then .5 servings). 9. Then click on ‘Save and Analyze’ 10. This will take you to a page with a variety of information. 11. Click on “Calculate DG Comparison” to see how you are doing with your dietary guidelines. For now, just say ‘maintain your weight’. 12. Write the first day’s totals (T) and the corresponding emoticons for each nutritional component in the “T” and columns under Day 1 in the table on the next page. 13. Now click on the ‘Update Profile’ button at the top of the MyPyramid page, and change the date to the next day of your food diary. Repeat steps 7-12 for that day. 14. Repeat for the entire week. 15. How did you do? Put an “X” next to any major food groups that your diet lacked more than two times during the week. 16. Put a star next to the major food groups that you seem to get enough of on a regular basis (you got a happy face at least 5 times during the past week). Dietary Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 Day 6 Day 7 Guidelines Recommenda tions

T T T T T T T

Grain Vegetable Fruit Milk Meat and Beans Total Fat Saturated Fat Cholesterol Sodium Oils Discretionary Calories B. Calculating your Nutrient Intakes

1. Now Click on ‘Update Profile”, go back to your first day, and click on ‘Proceed to Food Intake’. 2. From the top menu bar, choose ‘Analyze your Food Intake’. 3. Now choose the second option ‘Calculate Nutrient Intakes’. You will see a listing of all of the major USDA nutrients. Write down your recommended amounts and ranges, and then write down the amounts that you ate on Day 1.

Nutrient Your Intake Recommendation or Acceptable Range

Food Energy/Total Calories (kcals) Protein (gm) Carbohydrate (gm) Total Fiber (gm) Total Fat (gm) Saturated Fat (gm) Monounsaturated Fat (gm) Polyunsaturated Fat (gm) Linoleic (omega 6) (gm) Alpha Linolenic (omega 3) (gm) Cholesterol (mg) Vitamin A (mcg RAE) Vitamin C (mg) Vitamin E (mg a-TE) Thiamin (mg) Riboflavin (mg) Niacin (mg) Folate (mcg, DFE) Vitamin B6 (mg) Vitamin B12 (mcg) Calcium (mg) Phosphorus (mg) Magnesium (mg) Iron (mg) Zinc (mg) Selenium (mcg) Potassium (mg) Sodium (mg) 4. Choose 3 vitamins or minerals from the following list that your diet either lacked, or had too much of. If you do not have 3 nutrients that were out of balance, do this activity for the ones that were out of balance, and the complete the activity with any others that interest you (up to a total of 3).

* Calcium * Folate * Iron * Magnesium * Selenium * Vitamin A * Vitamin B6 * Vitamin B12 * Vitamin D * Vitamin E * Vitamin K: Interactions with Coumadin (PDF, 39kB) * Zinc

Now, go to http://ods.od.nih.gov/Health_Information/Vitamin_and_Mine ral_Supplement_Fact_Sheets.aspx and click on the first nutrient that you have chosen. Fill out the questions below for that nutrient, by clicking on the appropriate section in the Table of Contents. Do the same thing for all three nutrients.

Name of nutrient 1:

What is it (Brief summary)

What Foods provide it? Which of these foods are you willing to eat regularly?

What is its role in health and disease prevention? (Brief summary)

What are some symptoms of its deficiency? Is there a risk of too much of it? (What happens to you if you take too much?)

Name of nutrient 2:

What are some symptoms of its deficiency?

Is there a risk of too much of it? (What happens to you if you take too much?) Name of nutrient 3:

What are some symptoms of its deficiency?

Is there a risk of too much of it? (What happens to you if you take too much?)