Dietary Analysis Project- Complete Part IV

Please submit Part III of the Dietary Analysis Project: Correcting Menus and Reanalyzing here.

Note: This may be submitted as a Word document if you have not yet started to combine this project into a PowerPoint.

Note: If needed, please review the project Overview in Week 3.

Correcting Menus and Reanalyzing

MyPlate comprises public domain material from the USDA.

Next you will be correcting the menu so that it will meet the recommendations. You will need to make changes to foods. To do so, simply enter your corrected menu on a different date in Supertracker. That way you can access both the original analysis (Part II) and this re-analysis (Part III) as you prepare your final project. You’ll also be able to review both menus and charts/graphs seamlessly using this approach. Please ask questions in the Ask the Professor area, as they arise.

To create the corrected menu, check your original menu first for problems. If, for example, the original menu did not have 3 distinct meals and 2-3 distinct snacks, be sure to include those missed items in the corrected menu. You want the corrected menu to meet with current nutrition recommendations for frequency of food consumption. It is not necessary that the corrected menu include items enjoyed by your subject or be realistic with respect to the preferences and lifestyle of your subject. It is more important that you can demonstrate how to improve upon problem areas in a diet and identify foods that are higher or lower in certain nutrients.

Once you have corrected the menu with the changes you think will make this meet the guidelines for your person (based on their height, weight, age), you are ready to reanalyze. Make sure you are analyzing the intake for a new day and not averaging this with the original intake analyzed back in Part II (Week 4).

If any nutrient is still not meeting needs, you will need to work on making corrections so that your menu meets the criteria listed before. If changes are made, you will need to run this information again. Look and see which nutrients are too high or too low. Think about which foods on the menu are contributing these nutrients and start with changes there.

Just a reminder, if you do need to make changes to the corrected menu, a new profile, nor date, does not need to be created. Just EDIT the information for the same day you already entered. This will save you a lot of time and will eliminate getting an average of two menus.

To be considered a corrected menu, the following should be true:

This image from Pixabay comprises public domain material.

• Daily Food Groups Report: Should read OK, acceptable to go over, as long as total calories for the day are +/- 100 calories from the target provided.
• Graph (Food Group bar graph): Should be at 100% (+/-10%) for all targets, acceptable to go over as long as total calories are +/- 100 calories for the day and there is balance between the overages (for example, 110% grains, 110% dairy, 120% vegetables versus 110% fruit, 350% protein, 200% dairy).
• For grains, at least 50% should be whole grains. Fruit juice should not be in excess.
• Daily Limit: Should be within +/- 100 calories of the target. Oil, fat and sodium should not exceed these limits. They may be over or at the limit, just not in excess.
• Nutrient Intake Report: Should show OK for all nutrients (although you may need to correct those to above or below for the sake of this project- see below). There are more nutrients than we are looking at listed on this report, so only focus on the nutrients we covered in class (calories, protein grams and %, carbohydrate grams and %, total fat and saturated fat, cholesterol, and all vitamin and minerals listed). At the end of these directions you will find a sample Nutrient Intake Report to show the highlighting for nutrients out of range. There are a few extras that we did not cover in class, so please do not worry about discussing those.
• Cholesterol must be < 300 and do not forget that carbohydrates should be greater than the RDA. That number for carbohydrates is only a minimum for brain function (along with prevention of ketosis). It is likely protein will be higher as well, but still needs to be within the AMDR range as part of those MyPyramid Recommendations.
• ***IMPORTANT*** Make sure to assess the macro-nutrients using the percentages that are provided and comparing to the target ranges. These are the AMDRs.
• For micro-nutrients, also check to make sure nothing is greater than 200% of the target. It may say OK, but we still want to be careful not to go too far over each day. This means for the indicated micro-nutrients (highlighted (using red font) on the sample below), calculate out the percentage. To do this, divide the actual intake by the target and multiple by 100. Type this percentage in to the Word version of the report next to the status (for example, OK 105%). This will make it easier for you to make comments on this for the final presentation. Only highlight those when greater than 200% or less than 80%.

*PLEASE NOTE: If the person you are creating a menu for has very high calorie needs, you will likely need to exceed 200% for many of the vitamins and minerals because you will need a higher amount of total food provided to meet the calorie needs. Just make sure that the macro-nutrients are still within range, even at the higher calorie level. If you have a menu where the calorie needs are 2800+ you will be graded based on 300% instead of 200% for the high end of the range. Please refer back to your Nutrient Intake Report.

Sample Nutrient Report

*This plan is based on a 2200 Calorie allowance.

Information About Dietary Supplements

** If you are African American, hypertensive, diabetic, or have chronic kidney disease, reduce your sodium to 1500 mg a day. In addition, people who are age 51 and older need to reduce sodium to 1500 mg a day. All others need to reduce sodium to less than 2300 mg a day.

*** Nutrients that appear twice (protein, carbohydrate, linoleic acid, and α-linolenic acid) have two separate recommendations:

1. amount eaten (in grams) compared to your minimum recommended intake
2. percent of calories eaten from that nutrient compared to the recommended range

You may see different messages in the status column for these two different recommendations.