3 Friends

Don't worry, I do have more!

Fan Jin

Hmmm, personally, I feel she could have reflected more about her analysis and look deeper into her diet as I'm sure there's a lot more to talk about! Her sodium intakes makes me feel afraid for her! I'm glad at least she realised to cut back on the salt. I also like her one dish meal!

Celeste

I like her efforts in the reflections, where she made the extra mile to mention which bread brand was changed to which bread brand (Gardenia to Cedele). Also, I applaud her mini-reflections after every day, which differs from mine and Fan Jin's where we recorded the meals first and then analyzed it at a go. However, I think she had forgotten to include her assessment of 3 other blogs.


Elizabeth

I enjoyed her frankness throughout the entire blog! I also liked her aglio oglio idea and I think her insight and analysis is quite substantial and deep, though it has room for improvement, perhaps? She could talk more about how, for example, she could improve on each level of the healthy diet pyramid rather than generally salts. Nonetheless, I also liked how she described each tool and the picture (:

<3 sudesna

good luck to one and all!

Reflect...

What have you learnt from your eating habits?

Really, I have learnt a lot about how one regular dish may affect your lifestyle or a few changes or attempts to make one healthier has equally a great effect. I always knew my diet was on the unhealthy side but it was never proven until this PT. And just because my BMI wasn't over 5000, I assumed that I was safe. This, of course, was falsified by my extensive research as turns out that not all effects revolve around obesity and I still have to take various precautions. Now I really know what they mean when they say "I am what I eat." This could not be more true! What you are consuming everyday is what is being used to carry out daily tasks and what is keeping you alive! It is essential and critical that we consider what we put in our mouths before gobbling away! Of course, we can still indulge ourselves once in a while, but from this PT, I found out that my once in a while was a bit too frequent. Also, I found out about the various risks which come with a low BMI, although this is beyond what is tasked.

"Your BMI is in the Low Risk category for cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes. However, your weight is in the unhealthy range for your height as you are at an increased risk of nutritional deficiencies and osteoporosis. Increase your BMI value to within 18.5 to 22.9 to stay healthy." 

Do you consider your diet a healthy one? Why?

I had mere doubts before the PT, but now I know it's true. My diet is quite far from healthy. I have a higher than recommended intake of most parts of the analysis, which is really frightening. It is kind of obvious as ice-cream has often been lunch and my eating times are quite irregular (in general, despite what my first few posts suggest). Also, I really enjoy my fast food restaurants from Pizza Hut to KFC to Pastamania and I'm sure I can name a lot more. The PT has become a warning sign for me, and I understand that it's important to start young so I am going to make an effort to change this. Without even going out and eating out, I exceeded my RDA, when sometimes I may be having cheesy, salty foods with my friends almost everyday! :O

Are the suggested nutritional tools useful? How?

They are definitely useful! Firstly, they are extremely precise and I suspect (and hope) accurate as well! Also, the tools are easy to comprehend and interpret and the percentages and comparisons against RDA help! Of course, they are quite tedious to fill in but no pain, no gain! The output was worth it, I really learnt a lot from this experience!

Why is your suggested one-dish meal healthy?

I suggest reference to this post for more information! (:

<3 sudesna!

A Healthy One Dish Meal

A lot of words previously, let’s do this in point form, shall we? (:

Originally:

-          Rice, polished, raw

-          Curry chicken

-          Carrot, raw

Modified:

-          Brown rice, steamed – changing to brown rice means more nutrients for the body (: see the difference

-          Curry chicken, steam or boil (do not fry!), use olive oil, less spices in the curry, discard the chicken skin – steaming or boiling is definitely healthier than frying (thus steam the rice in the previous point), olive oil contains monounsaturated fats which lowers the risk of heart disease and cholesterol levels, many spices may cause irritation in stomachs and chicken skin contains too much fat, thus it is best to discard it.

-          Add more vegetables! Baby corn, cucumbers, mushrooms, broccoli, etc! This increases dietary fibre content (:

So something like this is desirable!

 TFP (October 5, 2006). About Food and Fones. Retrieved 29 June 2010, from http://www.thefoodpornographer.com/2006/10/05/about-food-and-fones/

<3 sudesna yeahhh.

Analyzing My Diet!

Using the “Food Intake Assessment” Tool

Using this tool, I keyed in whatever diet I had previously traced and meticulously listed all the ingredients.

Period of Analysis: 21/06/2010 - 23/06/2010

	Energy (kcal)	Carbohydrate (g)	Protein (g)	Total Fat (g)	Saturated Fat (g)	Cholesterol (mg)	Calcium (mg)	Dietary Fibre (g)	Sodium (mg)
Average intake per day	3,374	580.5	87.2	81.0	32.2	92.2	1,665.3	16.9	2,032.2
Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA)	1,942	291.2	61.0	64.7	21.6	194.2	1,000.0	19.4	1,295.0
% of recommendation met	174	199	143	125	149	47	167	87	157

The following table also reflects the amount of percentage of calories of my diet versus the recommended value.

	Your diet	Recommendation
Total Carbohydrates	69%	55 - 65%
Total Protein	10%	10 - 15%
Total Fat	22%	25 - 30%

This obviously is very telling! Although in real life my BMI is 17 and I am technically underweight, my diet reflects otherwise! I’m guessing this means that although my diet may be unhealthy and exceed my RDA by a lot (almost by 100% for carbs!), the effect does not purely lie on how much weight I gain or the amount of fat increase in my body. Perhaps this suggests that the effects are within my body system? Is that better or worse?! D:

“Excess sodium increases the blood volume, which then raises the pressure in our blood vessels. Hypertension or high blood pressure increases the risk of stroke and heart attacks.”

I have excess sodium intake – does this suggest….? I also have excess energy, saturated fat and total fat intake but the problems lie in obesity, which does not affect me as much.

I think this means I’d better take it easy on the salt. This is quite true, especially since without fail, I will buy French fries, which are poisoned with sodium, once I enter a fast food restaurant.

I’m quite sure I can make this change as previously when I realized I was drinking too much Coke (two cans a day!), I made the effort to control this habit, and now I drink Coke on a rarer basis. Nonetheless, sodium adds taste to a lot of foods and it doesn’t have a suitable replacement unlike Coke, which can be replaced in my diet with fruit juice or even just water. So this won’t come easily or naturally!

Using the “Recipe Analysis” tool

I also used this tool to analyze a meal which I consume very frequently, definitely at least twice a week, as a bare minimum. The meal is simply rice with curry chicken, which is often accompanied with a carrot cut into many slices to crunch on. The carrot at least is an attempt to make my dish slightly healthier. Nonetheless, the figures stand:

Ingredient Energy (kcal) Protein (g) Total Fat (g) Saturated Fat (g) Cholesterol (mg) Carbohydrate (g) Dietary Fibre (g) Sodium (mg) Rice (polished, raw) 628 13 1 0.2 0 142 0.7 40 Chicken Curry 165 9 11 4.5 28 9 2.5 294 Carrot (mature, raw, peeled) 33 1 0 0.0 0 7 4.6 59 Total (per serving) 826 23 12 4.7 28 158 7.8 393 Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) 1,942 61.0 64.7 21.6 194.2 291.2 19.4 1,295.0 % of recommendation met 43 38 19 22 14 54 40 30

The last two rows were added by me to further compare what the results actually mean, hoping that by calculating the actual amount’s percentage against the RDA, it would give me a greater understanding on how much of my RDA that one meal eats up (ironically!).

Dinner is my heaviest meal of the day, so I’m actually comfortable with it eating up that much of my RDA. Then again, looking back on the previous tables, maybe it’s all dinner’s fault D: I love my chicken; I definitely can’t give this up. Perhaps this would be one dish where I can modify the meal rather than scrap it off my regular diet.

Let’s go step by step!

Rice & Alternatives: well, I eat rice for 1-2 meals a day, so that should be a good point, I suppose! I also eat my bread on a regular basis. Frankly, I prefer white rice/bread than wholemeal, but at least I’m still eating rice/bread! I also love my roti pratas, chapattis, dosais, or whichever name you’d like to call it! I can eat it plain; I can even eat it with the sambar traditionally accompanied with it. Potatos fall in this category but French fries cause damage as well!

Fruits & Vegetables: I used to eat a lot of these in small bowls given by my mum but that has stopped since… a very long time ago ): so maybe I should ask my mum for more fruits more often. I do eat carrots and I like other fruits like strawberries. However, veggies are the bane! ): I’m gonna try tomatoes, which are veggies, right? Heh.

Meat & Alternatives: The group I can’t live without. I don’t eat pork, duck, beef or fish, only chicken. And my dairy intake is also very high, considering that my cereal and milk is eaten every single day, despite what time I wake up, be it 6am or 5pm (yes, it has happened). So I drink my milk very regularly, never missing a day out! Does that explain my glorious height (:

Fats, Oils, Sugar & Salt: I would have said that I really don’t take these but now I’d know better. As aforementioned, it’s time to make some changes in my diet, or at least attempt to do so!

AND THAT WAS A LOT OF ANALYSING (:

thank you!

<3 sudesna

Tracing My 3-Day Diet; Day 3

I think I'm actually eating less in the holidays. So much for trying to gain weight.

Day 3 – 23 June 2010

Time	Food eaten	Quantity
6.10am	Milk Milo cereal	300ml 100g
10.00am	Chicken bruschetta Mango Juice	1 piece 500ml
4.45pm	Patishapta	2 pieces
8.10pm	Rice Chicken Carrot	1 rice bowl 3 pieces – 100g 1 medium-sized carrot

<3 sudesna

Tracing My 3-Day Diet; Day 2

I'm addicted to party songs.

Day 2 – 22 June 2010

Time	Food eaten	Quantity
6.10am	Milk Milo cereal	300ml 100g
9.15am	Nutella bread: Nutella (jam) Bread	3 tablespoons 2 pieces
1.00pm	Lays chips	10g
8.00pm	Rice Chicken Carrot	1 rice bowl 3 pieces – 100g 1 medium-sized carrot

<3 sudesna

Tracing My 3-Day Diet; Day 1

3 cheers to cooking PT (:

Day 1 – 21 June 2010

Time	Food eaten	Quantity
6.10am	Milk Milo cereal	300ml 100g
10.00am	Nutella bread: Nutella (jam) Bread	3 tablespoons 2 pieces
1.20pm	Ice cream	1 cup
4.00pm	Rice Nuggets	1 rice bowl 120g
10.00pm	Milk Rice Banana	1 cup 1 rice bowl 2 wholes

<3 sudesna