Dietary Analysis

Dietary analysis is an important way of tracking and determining what and how well
someone is eating, their nutritional intake or eating habits. The most common
method to analyse food consumption is a food diary. This method is easy to access
online and simple to fill out, it can also help subjects to keep in track their daily
intakes of fruits, vegetables and liquids. Food diaries are often prescribed from GPs
to help identify any underlying issues a client may have; this way of measuring can
also make many realise what they are eating out of proportion. Other methods can
be a 24-hour recall administrated by nurses. The positives of this way is that it can
be administrated over the phone in vast scales, its downfall is the estimation of food
sizes can vary from person to person. Subjects can give bias information in what
they perceive to be good or bad (Wrieden et al..,2003).
Within a study on whether the self-reported dietary intake method was valid or not
showed that obese, female endurance athletes and adolescence all underestimated
the quantity of energy intake due to poor weighing or estimation skills. If subjects did
not correctly measure food over a long period of time it could cause a weight gain.
This method is a poor choice and should not be used to accurately measure food
intake as it was easily misinterpreted (Schoeller, 1995).
Subjects food diary as shown below provides information that even at a glance the
subject is not eating the recommended daily intake of 5 fruit and vegetables a day.
This is very important to consume on a daily basis as it provides the body with
nutrients to help build up immunity and provide the gut with essential fibre (NHS
Choices, 2015). For the client to have a healthier lifestyle a recommendation should

be to follow the governments national eat well plate (Department of Health, 2014).
This provides nutritional information with how much to eat of each food category.
This plate suggests that the recommendations are for a daily diet rather than 1 single
meal. White bread should be subsidised with wholegrain bread as it contains less
salt and sugar and more nutritious grains and fibre. There is no real concern for this
clients diet lifestyle because she is not consuming any unhealthy products in large
quantities. To get a more accurate view a 2-week plan should be used to identify any
problem areas. This diary plan was also written by hand it will be hard for the client
to understand how many calories they have been consuming with each meal. A
suggestion to help solve this problem would be to downloads a food diary app such
as MyFitness Pal. This helpful free app can help users by informing and identifying
the calorific equivalence in each meal.

Day
Mo
nda
y
Tue
sda
y
We
dne
sda
y

Breakfast
Cheerios +
Semi
skimmed
milk
2 Slices of
White
Toast,
buttered
2 Slices of
White
Toast,
buttered

Lunch
Cheese
sandwhich
(White bread)
Beans on
Toast
Tomato soup,
1 slice of
bread,
buttered

Dinner
2 Paprika Chicken
breasts, Broccili,
Carrots, Peppers &
Cauliflower
Tomato pasta with 2
chicken breasts

Snacks

Banana,
petits
filous
yogurt

2 fried eggs, chips and

beans

Drink
apple
Juice +
6
waters
apple
Juice +
6
waters
apple
Juice +
6
waters

References
Department of Health (2014) The eatwell plate: how to use it in promotional
material. London: Department of Health England.
NHS Choices (2015) Why 5 A-Day. [Online]
Available from: http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/5ADAY/Pages/Why5ADAY.aspx
Schoeller, D. A. (1995). Limitations in the assessment of dietary energy intake by
self-report. Metabolism, 44, 18-22.

Wreiden , W., Peace, H., Armstrong, J. and Barton, K. (2003) A short review of
dietary assessment methods used in National and Scottish Research Studies.
[Online]
Available from: http://www.food.gov.uk/sites/default/files/multimedia/pdfs/scotdietass
essmethods.pdf