Minerals

Minerals
Refer to your reports (from part 2, food groups and calories, and nutrients) as well as information in chapter 8 to answer the following:

1. Complete the following table. (2 points)

 

Mineral	Your Intake	Target Intake	Status
Calcium
Potassium
Magnesium
Iron
Sodium

 
 

2. Low dietary intake of a mineral during an extended period could be associated with nutritional deficiencies. (2 points)
3. Which disease is associated with calcium deficiency? b.

Which disease is associated with iron deficiency?

1. Which diseases are associated with an excess of sodium in your diet?

 
Refer to your 3-day food log (from part 1) to answer the following:
 

2. Identify and list the top 5 food sources of sodium in your diet, along with the amount of sodium in each. If needed (per your answer to Q1), suggests ways to decrease sodium in your diet. (4 points)

 

3. List food sources in your diet for the following minerals. (2 points)
4. Calcium
5. Potassium
6. Magnesium
7. Iron 4.

According to your answers in Q1, suggest ways to increase the food sources for each by completing the following table. Please note, an example appears in the first row (you may overwrite this). As in previous sections, be specific! (4 points)
 

Mineral	Food(s) to consume	How Much	How and when to eat
Calcium	E.g.: Milk	1 1/2 cups more/day	Mixed with cereal for breakfast
Potassium
Magnesium
Iron

 
Nutrient Supplements

5. Do you regularly take any nutrient supplements? (Vitamins, minerals, amino acids). Are the supplements you are taking useful? Explain (1 point)

 

6. Review your answers from your diet analysis. Overall, how would you judge your diet? _____Excellent _____Good _____ Fair _____Poor

 

7. What are your reasons for this dietary judgment?

 

8. Identify sources of error that decrease the accuracy of your analysis. In each section mark the sentences that best describe your recorded 3 days. Be honest, your answers will tell you how accurate your diet evaluation is and how much stock you should place in your conclusions.

 
(a) Accuracy

• _____ I weighed or measured everything I ate.
• _____ I weighed or measured some foods, but I estimated how much I ate of others.
• _____ I just estimated how much of anything I ate.
• _____ I really was not sure about amounts, so I just guessed.

(b) Ingredients

• _____ I know exactly how much there was of every ingredient in mixed dishes.
• _____ I wasn’t exactly sure of the ingredients (or their amounts) in the mixed dishes. I had to do some estimating of what they were, and how much.
• _____ I ate some foods that are easily recognized, such as coleslaw or vegetable soup, but what I ate may have been made with a slightly different recipe from the one in the data base.
• _____ I used foods from the data base to “construct” the recipe, but I am not sure how close they were to what I ate.

 (c)Foods I could not find

• _____ I looked in the data base and found every food I ate, in the exact same form I ate it in.
• _____ Using information from the label, I added foods I could not find in the data base.
• _____ I found most of the foods that I ate in the data base, but in some cases, I used the values for a similar food because the identical food was not listed in the table.
• _____ I found most of the foods that I ate in the data base, but left out the foods that I ate that were not listed.
• _____ I could not find quite a few foods in the data base. I did the best I could, but I had to guess a lot.

 
(d) Nutrient values

• _____ The data base was mostly complete for the foods I ate. There were very few missing values in the spreadsheet.
• _____ For many foods that I ate, nutrient values in the data base were not complete. There were lots of missing values in the spreadsheet.

(e) How typical

• _____ What I ate on these seven days was exactly the way I eat during the whole year since my eating habits are extremely habitual.
• _____ These seven days were typical of the way I eat, both in what foods I usually eat and how much, but my food intake varies somewhat from day to day.
• _____ These seven days were typical of how I generally eat, but there were some foods I ate quite a bit more of (or less of) than usual.
• _____ This seven-day period really does not reflect the way I usually eat.

➢ If your responses to question 7(a) – 7(e) were always at the top of each section, you can get a fairly accurate idea of your nutrient intake. Why not more accurate than “fairly accurate”? Because of several limitations in the data base itself.
o Rounding off is built into the table
o Food values are average values
Even if you ate one tomato, exactly the same size as the one in the data base, you might not have consumed the exact nutrients listed.
o Your tomato may have been picked green
o It may have been a different variety of tomato
o It may have been stored under less than ideal conditions In other words, the data base is not perfectly accurate for all possible foods!

• If your responses to questions 8(a) – 8(e) were in the middle part of each section, than your seven day record gives you an approximate idea of your nutrient intake, at least a ball park figure.
• If your responses to questions 8(a) – 8(e) were at the bottom of each section, than your results are only a guess about your nutrient intake. Hopefully, you have learned something about the nutrients in some foods, but you may not have learned very much about the nutrients in your own diet.

(f)Where did your responses to question 8(a) – 8(e) tend to fall?
_____ Top (pretty accurate indication of nutrient intake)
_____ Middle (ballpark estimate of nutrient intake) _____
Bottom (guess of nutrient intake)
Your answer to question 8(f) tells you how much stock to place in your conclusions. Hopefully, all of your work gives you some idea of how nutritious your diet is, but it is not absolutely accurate.
A true picture would only come through very elaborate and expensive testing.

• Weighing your food intake over a longer period of time and chemically analyzing identical samples of everything you ate
• Determining your metabolic rate and activity level
• Conducting biochemical studies of your blood, urine, feces, and tissues.