By: Joann Bally CSCS
If you want a detailed assessment of your diet, click on the My Pyramid Tracker link from the main
page of www.mypyramid.gov or from My Pyramid Plan. You need to have recorded what you ate for a
whole day before you do this. Record everything, even the 3 M&Ms or the handful of peanuts. Use the
My Pyramid Worksheet to make it easier. Register when the system asks you to and it will save your
information. Click Assess Your Food Intake. Now enter your height and weight, which allows the
system to give you a better recommendation for calories and nutrients than you got with My Pyramid
Plan. Next, click Proceed to Food Intake, and enter the foods you recorded. Enter a food and it
gives you options. If it doesn’t have the exact thing you ate, choose something as close to it as
you can. (This, of course, means that the totals will not be exact.) You also enter portions, so
record that as you go along. When you’ve entered the foods, click Save and analyze. Next you can
click Calculate DG Comparison to see how close you came to the Dietary Guidelines. First, you will
be asked if you want to maintain or achieve a healthy weight.
The system will present you with emoticons for good, average, or poor compliance with the
guidelines. Click on any sad faces to see what you can do to improve the poor ratings. There is a
lot of information here, and we will let you look around and find it yourself. Click Calculate
Nutrient Intakes from Food to get a nutrient breakdown. If you’re coming up short on some nutrients,
you can adjust your diet, and also make sure those nutrients are included in your
multi-vitamin/mineral supplements.
Don’t think you have to meet these recommendations exactly. This is complicated material, and there
are some holes regarding how the ratings are figured as well as questions on the recommendations
themselves. (I think they allow too much fat and sugar, for instance.) Although the USDA supports
the farming, meat, and dairy industries, and this may be reflected in the recommendations, you can
still find information on alternatives. For instance, if you are lactose intolerant and can’t digest
milk (like most of the adults in the world), you can find a recommendation on what to eat instead of
dairy. This is overall great reference material, and you can answer a lot of questions about
nutrition and healthy diets by referring to My Pyramid.
Read Part 1
Here
Read Part 2
Here
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