Human Nutrition

Nutrition

Nutrition Sources laboratory:

In this laboratory, you will explore the USDA’s recommended nutrition sources, track your daily intake of food and calculate the sources of your nutrition on a typical day, find your daily recommended nutrition plan (MyPlate Plan) based on your individual factors and compare your typical day’s nutrition with that of your MyPlate Plan. You will then suggest changes that you can make to your diet to better match up with your ideal MyPlate Plan. Plan on tracking all of the food you eat for one day.

1. Go the main website for Choose MyPlate.gov here . Scroll down to “Click a Food Group to Explore”. Explore the foods that are examples of the 5 main food categories (fruits, vegetables, protein, grains and dairy) by clicking on the symbol and then click “Learn More”.

2. For one day, write down everything you eat right after each meal and snack. You will breakdown each meal into the 5 food group categories and type how much you ate of each category in either cups or ounces (depending on the food group). Indicate which part of the meal fits into each of the food group categories by placing it in parentheses. See my breakfast example below and follow my example. To get information on each food category, use this link here. Scroll down and click on each the tabs for Fruits, Vegetables, Protein, Dairy, and Grains on the left. At the bottom of the page for each food category tab there are information tables to help you count the number of cups or ounces for common foods and which foods are included in that food group. Use the "+" sign to see the information tables. For fruits, click the "+" for the Cup of Fruit Table, for vegetables, click the "+" for the Cup of Vegetables table, etc. Don't use the Weekly Subgroup tables.

Follow the format of My Breakfast example below for your meals:

Meal 1 = oatmeal with blueberries, pecans and maple syrup. Milk

Fruits: ½ cup (blueberries)

Vegetables: 0 cups

Grains: 2 ounces (cooked oatmeal)

Protein: 2 ounces (pecans)

Dairy: ½ cup (milk)

You’ll notice that maple syrup is not accounted for in this calculation

**Note: Fruits, Vegetables, and Dairy need to be in Cups, but Grains and Protein need to be in ounces

2.a.) Following the example above carefully, type the breakdown of each of your meals and snacks beginning with your first meal here:

Meal 1 =___________________________(fill in your descriptions)

Fruits: _______________Cups ( )

Vegetables:______________Cups ( )

Grains: _________________ounces ( )

Protein:___________________ounces ( )

Dairy:________________ Cups ( )

Meal 2 =___________________________( )

Fruits: _______________Cups ( )

Vegetables:______________Cups ( )

Grains: _________________ounces ( )

Protein:___________________ounces ( )

Dairy:________________ Cups ( )

Meal 3 =___________________________( )

Fruits: _______________Cups ( )

Vegetables:______________Cups ( )

Grains: _________________ounces ( )

Protein:___________________ounces ( )

Dairy:________________ Cups ( )

Snack 1 =__________________________ ( )

Fruits: _______________Cups ( )

Vegetables:______________Cups ( )

Grains: _________________ounces ( )

Protein:___________________ounces ( )

Dairy:________________ Cups ( )

(Add more snacks here if you had more than one, most of us do!)

2 b. Using the information from 2.a. above, fill in Table 1 below including Total on the right by adding up the total amounts in each category (Fruits, Vegetables, Grains, Protein and Dairy):

Table 1. Amounts of food eaten for each food group category over the course of one day.

c. Copy and Paste your meal breakdowns (from 2.a. above) and Table 1 into your journal entry.

1. Get your MyPlate Plan here. Scroll down to “Get Your MyPlate Plan” and click “Start”. Enter your individual information such as age, weight, etc. and click on “Calculate Food Plan”. The next screen will show you how many calories you require to maintain your current weight.

Click on that tab that says the number of calories to maintain your current weight.

The next screen will show your "MyPlate Plan” with daily recommended amounts for each food group based on the above number of calories. Select, copy and paste the entire “Your MyPlate Plan” directly into the journal entry. It should include the calories and all of the daily recommended amounts for each food category. Do not use screenshots unless you first capture your entire MyPlate Plan (you may need to decrease the zoom in your browser settings), CROP the screenshot on your computer, then insert it into the Journal using the 3rd button on the third row. Attachments do not work in journal entries.

1. Compare your totals with your MyPlate Plan using Table 2 below. For the difference column for each food group, you will take the Amount Recommended in MyPlate Plan and SUBTRACT the Amount Eaten from Table 1 total.

Table 2. Comparison between amounts recommended in the MyPlate Plan and the total amount of food categories eaten in one day (from Totals Column in Table 1).

Assignment Instructions:

Nutrition Sources Journal

**** First read "Instructions for Nutritions Sources Journal" to see details of what is required for this journal entry.

For this journal, include all of the following from the Instructions:

1. Your food entries and breakdowns (from number 2.a.)

2. Table 1 filled in

3. Your MyPlate Plan that you copy and paste directly from the website into the journal (from number 3)

4. Table 2 filled in

5. Suggested changes that you can make to improve your diet and better align with the MyPlate Plan’s daily recommendations for each food category. Include full answers to questions 5.a through 5.c.