Throughout this week, I monitored my diet to see the amount of calories and nutrients were going into my body every day, and I have to admit, I was a bit surprised at the results. According to the chart, the average Calorie intake I had per day was lower than what was recommended for a person my size and activity level, and was actually 37.7% recommended amount. Instead of it being 2329 Calories per day, which is what it should have been, I apparently only ate an average of 1450.4 Calories per day of this week, which means that consequently, I lacked a number of nutrients in my diet. I may attribute my poor amount of Calorie intake to the stress of junior year, but the truth of the matter is that without the proper nourishment in calories, I was unable to meet the standard requirements for most of the nutrients that I recorded throughout the week. Of all of the nutrients that I tracked this week, only one stood out as being above the recommended amount: vitamin C. In my vitamin C intake, there was a staggering 98% increased amount that I had eaten on average every day, and I had approximately 68.99 mg too much vitamin C in my diet per day. One day that I found to be especially Vitamin C heavy was on day 5, where I had 323.32 mg of Vitamin C. The majority of my Vitamin C intake came from fruits like jujubes and magos, which I might have had too much of throughout the week contributing to the vast excess of Vitamin C in my average diet. To improve my current eating diet, I should probably look to cut down on fruits containing excessive amounts of Vitamin C, although the amounts of vitamin A in these foods may affect my vitamin A intake as well. In comparison, however, the amount of of iron in my diet was the most deficient, at 62.3% below the recommended amount of 20.96 mg. A lack of iron in any diet can lead to consequences including fatigue and headaches, so some things that I can do to improve this deficiency in my diet would be to eat more iron rich foods such as red meats, dark leafy greens, and iron-fortified cereals, breads, and pastas. One thing that I do need to keep an eye on would be the protein and carbohydrate values that each of these iron-rich foods have, because those are both nutrients that I am not lacking extensively in, and “overcarbsumption” may lead to various other health problems including hormone imbalance and diabetes. One other nutrient that I am supposedly severely lacking in would be the amount of fat, or lipid, that I ingested every day. One would think that fat would be one of the more excessively consumed nutrients for someone living in America, but that is apparently not the case. My diet was 35% deficient in fats, straying 26.5 g less than the recommended amount of 75.7 g of fat. One thing to look out for when adding more fats to my diet, nonetheless, would be the introduction of trans fats into my diet, because hydrogenated oils and the like are terrible for the body considering that they are not naturally exposed to the body. Some healthier fats to incorporate into my diet would be pine nuts, avocado, and olive oil. Out of the 8 nutrients that I documented in that week, I found two nutrients that were relatively well met with the recommended amount. Protein was one of them, with only a 0.4% excess per day, and part of the reason that I think I did so well on this nutrient was the fact that I incorporated meats such as pork and fish into my diet. For example, the sushi that I ate on day 1 played a large part in my overall protein intake, especially the yellowtail sashimi, which amounted to a total of 13.12 g of protein.
Another nutrient that did less than abysmal was my vitamin A intake. The deficiency that I had for vitamin A was only 13.8%, which separated itself from the more drastic deficiencies I had in
the other nutritional categories. Some key players in supporting the recommended amount of vitamin A in my diet would be foods like bok choy, which had approximately 476.8 Retinol Equivalents of vitamin A per ⅓ cup.
Foods that bolstered my protein and vitamin A intake somewhat made my otherwise lacking diet less terrible, though they certainly do not pardon the lack of most other nutrients that my diet had. My general take away from this assignment would be to pay more attention to what goes into my body, and be cognizant of the effects of having deficiencies in nutrients on the body.
Works Cited
Brooking, Katherine. "18 Fat-Rich Foods That Are Good for You." LIVESTRONG.COM. LIVESTRONG.COM, 16 May 2016. Web. 27 Sept. 2016.
"Calorie Counter." Free , Diet & Exercise Journal. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Sept. 2016.
"Food and Nutrition Service." Food and Nutrition Service. United States Department of Agriculture, n.d. Web. 25 Sept. 2016.
"International Units of Vitamin A." International Units of Vitamin A. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Sept. 2016.
"Iron Deficiency Anemia." Prevention. Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, 2 Jan. 2014. Web. 26 Sept. 2016.
"List of Countries." Papa John's Pizza. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Sept. 2016.
"Welcome to the USDA Food Composition Databases." Welcome to the USDA Food Composition Database. United States Department of Agriculture, May 2016. Web. 25 Sept. 2016.
Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 25 Sept. 2016.
