Second part of data analysis

The Healthy Diet Pyramid

So what exactly is this healthy diet pyramid? Basically, in our everyday lives, most of us have three meals a day--breakfast, lunch and dinner. However very often, we tend to have snacks in between these three meals. Is this good or bad? Well, food can either improve your health through providing you with essentials nutrients and minerals for you to grow healthily, or it can increase your risk of chronic life-style related diseases, such as diabetes, cholestrol, coronary heart disease etc.

The healthy diet pyramid consists of 4 main food groups with the food that she be consumed most at the base and the food group that should be consumed less at the top.  These food groups are basically 4 main classes of food grouped based on the amount needed to be consumed by us. This is associated with the type of nutrients or minerals these foods give us, for example, food found in the 'rice and alternatives' group is associated with carbohydrates while vegetables are associated with vitamins, dietary fibre and such.

Basically, by basing our diet on the healthy diet pyramid, we would be aiming to achieve a balanced diet. It is necessary to have this balanced diet because despite how much you exercise, if you lack minerals that food can give you, you would still be considered unhealthy. It all falls back on the idea that 'you are what you eat'. Here's a more precise look of what exactly a diet looks like. ( Please take note that all my resources are taken from the health promotion board website where there are many digitools or health tools which you should definitely check out to learn more about healthy living)

Food Group	Number of Servings /Day	Example of 1 Serving
Rice and Alternatives	5-7	2 slices bread (60g) ½ bowl* rice (100g) ½ bowl noodles or beehoon (100g) 4 plain biscuits (40g) 1 thosai (60g) 2 small chapatis (60g) 1 large potato (180g) 1 ½ cup plain cornflakes (40g)
Fruit	2	1 small apple, orange, pear or mango (130g) 1 wedge pineapple, papaya or watermelon (130g) 10 grapes or longans (50g) 1 medium banana ¼ cup*** dried fruit (40g) 1 glass pure fruit juice (250ml)
Vegetables	2	¾ mug** cooked leafy or non-leafy vegetables (100g) ¼ round plate+ cooked vegetables 150g raw leafy vegetables 100g raw non-leafy vegetables
Meat and Alternatives	2-3	1 palm-sized piece fish, lean meat or skinless poultry (90g) 2 small blocks soft beancurd (170g) ¾ cup cooked pulses (e.g. lentils, peas, beans) (120g) 5 medium prawns (90g) 3 eggs (150g)++ 2 glasses milk (500 ml) 2 slices of cheese (40g)

If we were to take a analyse my data based on the energy Energy and Nutrient Compositions of Food tool, we can notice a few things about my diet in accordance with the various food groups.

1. Rice and Alternatives: If I were to calculate the number of servings of I had on the 26th, it would be  about 5.3, on the 27th it was 8 and on the 28th it was 6. Therefore I have an average intake of about 6 servings per day. This is acceptable as of now since the acceptable range is 5-7 servings per day. One thing to take note of is that I exceeded this range on Saturday and just reached this range on Friday, so there is quite an extreme shift of my carbohydrate intake from a weekday to a weekend.
2. Fruits: The number of servings on the 26th was 0.9, it was 0.1 for the 27th and about 1 serving on the 28th. On average, it was about 0.7 per day :( This goes to show that I have severely deprived myself of fruits. Another interesting observation is that on Saturday, my fruit intake was the lowest amongst the three days and nearly reached zero. This provides yet another interesting detail about my Saturday eating habits.
3. Vegetables : On the 26th I had about 1.2 servings, on the 27th it was 0.2,  and on the 28th, it was about 1/2 a serving. Therefore, on average it is about 0.6 per day which is way below the required amount of 2.
4. Meat and alternatives: On the 26th it was about 1.7 servings, on the 27th it was about 4.1 and on the 28th it was about 2.3. On average, this means that I consume 2.7 servings of meat and alternatives per day. Interestingly, even though this falls within the acceptable range, I still seem to be conusming more than the acceptable range on Saturdays.