Reflectons about my friend's blogs :)

In this post, I will be commenting on three of my friend's blogs to provide some feedback about the quality of their blog entries as well as the information provided.

Firstly, I will be looking at Naseema's blog.

http://foodforthoughtnoorul.wordpress.com/

I would like to comment Naseema for firstly, the very thoughtful name she came up with for the blog. From the link itself, it has captivated me to click on it and visit her blog. Very much similar to the link of her blog, Naseema's entries are captivating and detailed. I feel though that she could be more mindful about the presentation of her blog. Some of the colours used in Naseema's blog are unclear, for example in her table for the energy and nutrient composition of foods. In terms of content, I commend Naseema for her use of detail especially when introducing the healthy one dish meal. She carefully explains the nutrients found in the food for example proteins, carbohydrates and such and she explais why the method of boiling is healthy. One point for improvement would be that Naseema could have explained why she did not meet the required amount of servings for her healthy diet pyramid, maybe because that particular meal she had was a particularly heavy one or maybe it was a weekend, so on and so forth. This would have helped her to consider the reasons behind her diet better so that she would be able to modify it better. In any case, good job Naseema!

Next, I will be commenting on Kavya's blog.

http://kavyasivakumar-foodnutrition.blogspot.com/

Kavya's blog is well written with clear elaboration. It's layout is visually appealing and it is clear and easy to follow. Kavya gives quite a comprehensive discussion over her diet through using the healthy diet pyramid and I feel it is commendable that she explained the use of each nutritional tool so that readers are given a clear idea of what to look out for when reading her blog. One point for improvement for Kavya would be her one dish meal. It is good that she points out the special nutritional value of some of the ingredients of her meals, for example peas and capsicum containing vitamins. What she could have done was to give a comprehensive discussion about the key points which make the meal healthy so that it would have been more informative for readers. Apart from that, I feel that she has given her best effort in this blog and I commend her for it. Well done, Kavya!

Last but not least, I will be looking at Sophia's blog.

http://www.cookingwithnotime.blogspot.com/

I feel that Sophia's blog is interesting due to her unique idea about making an unhealthy one-dish-meal healthy. This is the first time I have come across it the entries I have been looking through so I think it's great she put in the effort to give some originality to her ideas. She could have strengthened this strong point about her blog about giving more in depth explanation about what exactly makes the dish unhealthy so that readers will really feel that her suggestions to make the dish more healthy are useful.

Sophia also presents some very creative ideas for example about the effect of less oil and salt on the kidney. It would have been great if she had been able to elaborate more about these key points to keep readers interested. Sophia also could have used more nutritional tools to analyse her diet but I still think she has done a fantastic job. Kudos to you Sophia!

A healthy one dish meal!

In this post, i'll be introducing to you a healthy one dish meal.

What's a healthy one dish meal?
A healthy one dish meal is simply a meal that doesn't have its components cooked and served separately. In a one dish meal, every component plays an important role in giving the dish its identity. For example, spaghetti will still be spaghetti even if you don't add cheese to it but will Hainanese Chicken Rice still be the same without the chicken, or the cucumber, or the rice? Basically, a one dish meal combines the various components of the different food groups in a balanced single dish. The meal i'll be introducing is Nasi Ayam.

What is Nasi Ayam?
Nasi Ayam is a malay word which is directly translated to English to be "Rice Chicken". That's right, Nasi Ayam is the malay version of the well known Hainanese Chicken Rice in Singapore. The difference beween Nasi Ayam and chicken rice would be that the chicken is roasted rather than simmered in chicken stock like that of Hainanese chicken rice . The rice is fragrant thanks to the use of  a pandan leaf when cooking and the chicken is also slighlty orangish compared to the chicken rice chicken. Nasi ayam also wouldn't be the same without its chilli sauce that has a slightly tangy taste.
 
Recipe for Nasi Ayam: ( taken from petit chef.com)

Ingredients for Chicken:
1 small fresh organic free-range chicken

3 shallots, minced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 small piece ginger, minced

1 Tbsp. dark soy sauce

2 tsp. light soy sauce

1 Tbsp. tomato paste or sauce

1 tsp. chilli powder or chilli sauce

1 tsp. salt

1 cucumber for garnishing

Ingredients for Rice:

2 cups rice, washed and drained

1 small piece ginger

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 Tbsp. butter

2 pandan leaves

2 Tbsp. fried shallots

pinch of salt
Ingredients for Chilli Sauce:

6 fresh red chillies

5 cloves garlic

1 piece ginger

¼ cup lime juice

1 tsp. sesame oil

salt and sugar to taste

Method:

1. Mix the ingredients for chicken in a bowl. Clean chicken and pat dry, prick with a fork to allow seasonings to penetrated. Marinate chicken with seasonings for 1/2 day or leave overnight in refrigerator.

2. Heat oven to 375 degrees F. Roast chicken for about an hour, remove and cut into serving pieces when cool.

3. Wash rice and put in rice cooker. Heat some butter in a pan and fry ginger and garlic till fragrant. Remove from heat and pour this mixture and pandan leaves to rice. Add sufficient water to cook according to the rice cooker.

4. Blend or pound finely all the ingredients for the chilli sauce. Season to taste with sugar and salt.

5. Serve rice with chicken, sliced cucumbers, chilli sauce and dark soy sauce. Garnish rice with some fried shallots.

Tips: Soak peeled shallots with a pinch of salt in water for about 5 minutes. Slice thinly and deep fry in hot oil till crisp and brown. Drain on paper towels

 

 

Third tool for data analysis

The third tool I used is called the fat info finder. According to the instructions given to me for my task, I was suppossed to use RDDA, the Healthy Diet Pyramid, Food Intake Assessment, Recipe Analysis, Energy and Nutrient Compositions in Foods.

 Having used the healthy diet pyramid and energy and nutrient composition in foods tool, I am suppossed to use one other abovementioned tool but I can't seem to find RDDA on the hpb website, the food intake assessment keeps showing an error page and recipe analysis keeps telling me that I have an error with my recipe. Therefore, i've decided to use the fat info finder instead. I feel that this is still highly relevant because we talked about saturated an ustaurated fats in class and I am personally interested in finding out the fat content in my food, especially since my fat free mass was on the higher side when I measured my BMI in school.

Basically fats can be classified into categories such as saturated fats, unsaturated fats and transfats. Transfats are a specific type of fat formed when liquid fats are made into solid fats by adding hydrogen atoms in a process called hydrogenation. Unsaturated fats are a fats derived from plants or animal sources (especially fish), and are at room temperature. Saturated fats are fats that solely come from animals and are solid at room temperature. Excess dietary fats and body fats can result in many chronic diseases such as high blood pressure, high cholestrol and even heart disease. Based on the fat info finder, here's some of the informatin about the fat content of the food I ate over the 3 days, take a look:

Generally , the most of the food I consumed over these three days have a relatively low fat content. If I were to calculate the amount of fat in the food I consumed each day, here's what the data looks like:

1. 34.2g for food consumed on Friday (26th)
2. 20.8g for the food consumed on Saturday (27th)
3. 8.9g for the food consumed on Sunday. (28th)

The average amount consumed per day would be 21.3g.

What I find interesting is that even though my diet on Saturday was the most unbalanced, being low in terms of fruit and vegetable intake and beyond the acceptable range for meat and alternatives, it still has a lower fat content that the food I consumed on Friday.  Of course, this may not be a completely accurate depiction of the amount of fats consumed, since I haven't taken into account factors like the use of oil which increase fat content of for example the french fries. I personally feel that I could have obtained a better analysis through using the Food Intake Assessment Tool. However, my data collected so far does give me an idea or a representation of the fats in my diet. In one of my later entries, I will have some reflections which will include some conclusions drawn from my analysis. Now, it's time for you to take a look at a the healthy one dish meal which I selected to find out more! 

Third Tool for data analysis

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.

Analysis of my diet

Analysis of my diet is first done using the Energy and Nutrient Compositios of food tool. This tool is found on the health promotion board website and is used to find out the energy value and nutrient content of foods. How thi s tool works is that you simply can enter any keywords to search for any foods available in the database or simply select a category (eg. meatbased dishes).  Here's some the results I got about my diet.

 

In my next post, I shall review my diet using the Healthy Eating Pyramid from the Health Promotion Board website.

3-day Food Record

 Now to take a look at my 3-day food record. The record consists of all the meals and snacks that I had from 26th to 28th August ( Friday to Sunday). What's the purpose of choosing one weekday and a weekend? Well simply because the weekend is a time of relaxation so people tend to have more times on their hands to eat or they feel more relaxed and eat more. Apart from that, most people also tend to eat out on the weekends. Therefore, having a higher food intake over weekends also means that our chances of having a slightly more unbalanced or unhealthy diet is higher. Well, let's take a look at mine and see how it is :)

Date	Time	Name of food eaten	Components of meal	Quantity
26 August	6:10 am	Chocolate muffin and HL milk	Chocolate chips, flour, eggs, milk, sugar	1 muffin and half a glass of milk (250ml)
26 August	8:45 am	Hello panda biscuits, Milo	Hello panda contains chocolate and milo has nestle, milo powder	I packet of hello panda biscuits and l milo packet (85ml)
26 August	3:30pm	Garlic bread with soup	Gardenia bread baked with garlic butter and mushroom soup	3 pieces of bread, 1 bowl of mushroom soup
26 August	5: 30pm	Muruku	Flour, chili	1 piece
26 August	7:30pm	Olive oil spaghetti with fruit salad	Spaghetti fried in olive oil with herbs and chili flakes. Eaten with baked potato pieces and baked salmon.	One plate of spaghetti, 8 small pieces of potato and 3 pieces of salmon. 3 pieces cucumber, 2 pieces of capsicum, 4 grapes, 3 pineapples, 2 slices of orange, 2 slices of apple
26 August	7:50pm	Toblerone	Dark chocolate and nuts	1 bar
27 August	11:30 am	Sandwich with milk	Toasted bread with butter, ham and cheese. Chocolate Meiji milk.	1 sandwich (2 slices of bread, 2 slices of ham and a piece of cheese). 350ml of milk
27 August	2: 20pm	Pizza with left over spaghetti	Pizza—ham, pineapples, cheese, sauce. Spaghetti—with olive oil, salmon and potatoes ( from the night before)	A small bowl of spaghetti and 2 small slices of pizza
27 August	5:25pm	Muruku	Flour, chili	2 broken pieces
27 August	8:00pm	Chicken curry	Rice, papadum, fried tofu, pieces of cucumber, chicken drumsticks , masala from curry, French fries	3 pieces of cucumber, 2 chicken drumlets, 8 pieces of tofu, 9 french fries
27 August	9:30pm	Kit kat	Chocolate, waffer	I bar
28 August	11:15pm	Sandwich with milk	Toasted bread with butter, ham and cheese. Chocolate HL milk.	1 sandwich (2 slices of bread, 2 slices of ham and a piece of cheese). 350ml of milk
28 August	2:30pm	Left over chicken curry	Brown rice, chicken drumsticks, papadum. Apples	¾ plate of brown rice, 2 pieces chicken drumstick, 1 papadum, 2 slices of apple
28 August	7:10pm	Thai Basil Chicken, fruit salad	Brown rice, papadum, a sunny side up, Thai basil chicken.	Half a plate of rice, one egg, 4 spoonfuls of the chicken, 1 papadum. 5 pieces cucumber, 2 pieces of capsicum, 2 pineapples, 2 slices of orange, 2 slices of apple, a slice of pear