3 ‘You are what you eat’

Produce a food diary entry to record all the food and drink that you, or a friend or relative, have eaten during a single day. It may be useful to record this in a spreadsheet like in Figure 2.

Now estimate the size (mass) of each item consumed with the aid of the following resource: Your balanced diet: Get portion wise! [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)]

Add the portion size data to your diary, as per Figure 2. Remember to separate out the component elements of what you ate, as far as possible, where a single foodstuff or meal contains multiple ingredients.

Figure 2 An example part of a food diary

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A screenshot of a spreadsheet showing an example food diary. In the top left hand corner the name of the person whose example food diary we are looking at, as well as the date the food diary is from are included. In the first column of the table the meal components are listed (baked beans (200g tin), 2 pieces of toast and orange juice); in the next column are the ingredients of each component; in the following column is the amount of each ingredients shown in grams and in the final column is a space for any additional notes.

Figure 2 An example part of a food diary

It is important to note that there is no standard view on portion size, and the BNF (2019) table is a (UK-based) guide to what represents a portion of each foodstuff. You can find additional sources used for the quantification of portion size on the internet if the table does not list the foods you have eaten. If this is the case, make sure that you cite the source(s) used in the estimations of portion size alongside your food diary so it is clear where your information has come from. Likewise, for single-ingredient foods like a piece of fruit, you could weigh the item before eating it, and record this as the size of that portion.

When you have completed your food diary entry, reflect on the following questions:

• How straightforward was it to match what you recorded in your diary to the categories in the table?
• How easy was it to estimate portion size of the food eaten?