Level 3
Skill 3: I will record my normal food intake and analyze the servings of each food group that I ate.
Continue on to level 4 after you finish this page.
**You will need my help to understand parts of this project; be sure to ask.**
Goal 1: Nutritional information for unlabeled foods
Identify unpackaged foods you commonly eat, such as apples, ground beef, or an egg from your backyard chicken. You can also find nutritional information for foods from many chain restaurants. Look up nutritional information at CalorieKing. Look up nutritional information for the foods you selected. Start a Google Doc for this project and title it, "Lastname, Firstname - Nutrition Project." Type "Goal 1: Nutritional information for unlabeled foods." List at least three unpackaged foods. Include the name, serving size, and grams of carbs, protein, and fat for each. You also need to calculate the calories for fat, protein, and carbs, and then total them.
Remember: fat has 9 Cal/gram, while carbs and protein have 4 Cal/gram
Example: Chick Fil A nuggets (8 count)
Total carbs = 12 g x 4 Cal/g = 48 Calories
Total fat = 12 g x 9 Cal/g = 108 Calories
Total protein = 26 g x 4 Cal/g = 104 Calories
Total calories = 260 Calories (When I get 12 nuggets, I'm eating 390 calories!)
Goal 2: Calculate your RDA
Go to www.choosemyplate.gov/tools-daily-food-plans. Click the image that reads, "Get Your MyPlate plan." Click "start" to set up a personal profile.
Determine your daily caloric need which is called RDA, or recommended daily allowance. This will be based on your current level of activity, age, sex, etc. There is a sample below. Yours will be slightly different than mine. Record your RDA on your "Food for a Day Log," after making your own copy. Insert the link to your spreadsheet in your Google Doc for this project under the heading, "Goal 2: Calculate your RDA." Also include a screenshot of your RDA.
Goal 3: Which foods should I eat?
Click on your RDA number, as determined above to see how many servings you need daily for each of the five food groups. Take a screenshot and upload it to your Google Doc under a heading which reads, "Goal 3: Which foods should I eat?"
There is a sample below. Yours will be slightly different.
Goal 4: Food for a day
Open your Food for a Day Log, which you already added your RDA to. Record all food and beverages, except water or diet drinks with no calories, for a 24 hour period. Take pictures of each meal or snack, including drinks. If you need help determining the nutritional information or serving sizes, take a picture of the food labels so I can help you.
1. In the meal column, record 'B' for breakfast, 'L' for lunch, 'D' for dinner, or 'S' for snack.
2. Separate out each food that you eat. For example, if you eat a ham and cheese sandwich with a slice of tomato and mayonnaise, you would need 5 lines on the log. Bread goes on one line with 2 servings, ham on its own line, cheese on its own line, tomato on its own line, and mayonnaise on its own line.
3. You must save a picture of each meal or snack, before you eat it, so that I can see it.
4. If you eat a prepackaged food such as frozen lasagna, you will need to take a picture of the nutritional label and determine how much of the food you ate for the serving size and servings eaten columns. Insert the picture of the nutrition label into your food log as a hyperlink. For example, If you ate lasagna, make the word lasagna be a hyperlink to the picture of the food label. This way I can help you when you get stuck.
5. Record your food on a typical day so that you can make a good comparison to your ideal meals at the end of this project. Do not choose a day when you were sick or forced to eat less than usual. If this does happen, please repeat the process on another day. If you ate less than 75% of your RDA when you tracked your food, you may not use that food log.
6. On your food log, the serving sizes must come from the website, "ChooseMyPlate.gov." For example, you ate 1 cup of steamed broccoli, not 196g.
Food for a day calculations
Totaling calories columns using a formula
If you want the spreadsheet to sum your columns for you, type the following formula in.
=sum(E7:E28)
"=" tells the spreadsheet that this is a formula
"sum" tells it to add
"( )" the numbers in the parentheses indicate the range of cells that you want added. You may have to adjust the range of cells for each column.
Converting grams to Calories from a food label
Find the total carbohydrates and total protein off the nutrition label. Multiply the number of grams times 4 to get the calories.
Repeat the process for total fat, but multiply the number of grams times 9, instead. *Remember - "fat makes you fatter!"
Calculating percentages of calories from carbs, protein, and fat
This is the same process you used to create food profiles in the shopping activity. We want to find out what part of your total calories for the day comes from each macromolecule. Divide the calories from carbs by the total calories and then multiply by 100. Round to the nearest whole number.
Total calories from carbs / total calories eaten x 100
Repeat this process for protein and then fat. Your three percentages should add up to 100%.
Calculating the 5%, 7%, and 9% ranges (based on your RDA)
You DO NOT have to do this on your Food for a Day Log. You only need to calculate these ranges on your Ideal Foods for a Day log, which is on the next page of this website.
To calculate plus or minus 5%: Multiply your RDA x .95 (95%) and that is the bottom of your range. Now multiply your RDA x 1.05 (105%) to get the upper end of the range. Your range might look like this 1900 - 2100 calories.
To calculate plus or minus 7%: Do the same as above, but multiply your RDA x .93 and x 1.07 to get your range.
To calculate plus or minus 9%: Do the same as above, but multiply your RDA x .91 and x 1.09 to get your range.
How do you know what counts as a 'serving' on ChooseMyPlate.gov?
Click on the food group that you think your food falls into. For example, if you ate green beans, you would click on "vegetables." Read until you get to, "Cup of Vegetable Table." Click the drop-down menu to see the serving sizes for various foods.
The screenshot above is just a partial list. Work from the ChooseMyPlate website for the full lists. Find your food or the closest food on the list. Be sure to look at the column heading to see how many servings you ate.
Not all foods are on these lists. Sometimes, you may have to guesstimate serving sizes by finding a food which is similar to yours. Each food will only fall into one food group. Leave all others blank (do not use zero's).
**Hint - some foods do not fall into any food group. This is because some things are just empty calories. These would be foods such as Little Debbie snack cakes, Gatorade, chips, candy, butter, and dips. You may certainly include a small amount of these foods in your ideal meals for a day log, but beware...as in real life, they add calories to your diet, without adding anything of nutritional value. This may cause you to go over on your RDA for calories. In real life, these empty calories contribute to weight gain, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases such as heart attack and stroke.