Writing your Personal Nutrition Journal on the Micronutrients and Water

For your micronutrient assessment, you will need to run a Bar Graph Report from AnalyzeMyDiet for each of the days you tracked. Unlike the Calorie Assessment Report, the Bar Graph will compare your intake of all your nutrients relative to the recommended intakes generated from your personal profile. So now you can see the micronutrients – the minerals and vitamins – as well as proteins, carbs, and lipids.

Step 1: Your vitamin intake: Prepare to write your discussion.

1. From the Bar Graph Reports from each day you tracked, identify at least two vitamins for which your intake is significantly below your recommended DRI. (For our purposes in this assignment, “significantly below” means less than 35-50% of your DRI.)
2. Review your Food Journal to see what foods contributed to your intake of these vitamins. What foods could you add to your diet to increase your intake?
3. Are there any fat-soluble vitamins for which your intake is OVER the DRI? If so, by how much? (The fat-soluble vitamins are A, D, K, and E)
4. Important: If you take a multivitamin or mineral supplement on a regular basis, you’ll need to refer to the nutrition label on your product and add the amounts the supplement contains to the amount of the fat-soluble vitamins reported on your Bar Graph. This is an important step to ensure that you are not taking in more of these vitamins on a regular basis than your body can use.

Step 2: Your mineral intake

1. From your Bar Graph Report, identify at least two minerals for which your intake is significantly below the recommended DRI.
2. Review your Food Journal to see what foods contributed to your intake of these minerals What foods could you add to your diet to increase your intake?
3. Sodium: Pay special attention to your intake of sodium. Is it 2300 mgs or less on this day you tracked? You’ll want to take a look at your Food Journal and determine which foods you could eliminate or cut down on to bring that total intake down. (Remember, this is a “snapshot” of your diet, and every day is different. So don’t be concerned – just be aware.)

Step 3: Reports

For this Journal, you’ll attach the Bar Graph Reports for each day you tracked. Although you do not have to attach Single Nutrient reports, you should look at them in order to identify the foods that contributed to your intake – or which are missing from your diet! This will be necessary to answer question 5.(((I don’t take any vitaimts))))

Step 4: Your discussion

• Write your discussion directly on the Journal page. Do NOT attach it with your reports. Your discussion should address the following :
  1. From the Bar Graphs, identify the four micronutrients you want to discuss. These should be the two vitamins and two minerals in which your intake is less than the recommended intake (the lowest percentage). Remember, you are going to choose the micronutrients in which you are consistently deficient – over all the days you tracked – not just any single day.
  2. Do you usually take a vitamin and mineral supplement? If your answer is no, skip to #5.
  3. If you do take a supplement, from the label, submit the amount of those four micronutrients included in the supplement. Add this to the percentages for these nutrients given in your Bar Graph report.
  4. If your supplement puts you over the recommended intake for any of the fat-soluble vitamins, it is important that you identify the amount of the overage. (No need to identify overages of the water-soluble vitamins – they will be excreted in the urine.)
  5. Now, identify at least one food that supplies each of the micronutrients you chose to discuss. Look back at your Single Nutrient Reports, and see which of those foods contributed to your intake. Is it possible to increase the frequency with which you include these foods in your diet? Discuss.
• Conclude your report with a brief statement about your intake of water. Do you drink bottled water? If so, which ones? Why do you use bottled water over tap? Reflect on approximately how much you spend on bottled water a week – this is not information you need to include in your discussion.) (I’m diabetic so I drink a lot of water)