diet analysis assignment

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My Favorite MindTap Feature: Diet Analysis MindApp

Updated: 9/21/2023

Tracy Daly is a professor at Cal State San Marcos, National University, Miramar College.

As a dietitian and health educator, my favorite  MindTap feature is the Diet & Wellness Plus (D&W+) diet analysis MindApp. I teach Health and Nutrition classes at all college levels and use D&W+ in almost every class. The ability to quickly find foods and beverages allows for an intuitive and educational experience for my students. D&W+ is the best diet analysis tool available—it’s user friendly, offers detailed nutritional analysis on many components of diet, and is a great teaching tool !

Diet & Wellness Plus allows you to help your students gain a better understanding of how nutrition relates to their personal health goals. Students track their diet and activity, generate reports and analyze the nutritional value of the food they eat. Students can experiment with the impact of diet, fitness and behavior modification on health by recording and evaluating variables. Diet & Wellness Plus empowers students to be active with a dynamic dietary analysis tool. The new look and advanced instructor options make dietary analysis simple and effective. I love the user-friendly options, including the new assignment dashboard and appealing avatars.

“Diet & Wellness Plus is such a useful tool for my students when analyzing their diets. It is user-friendly, intuitive, and clear. The ability to create custom foods and recipes personalizes the practice and allows for a more connected experience compared to other diet analysis software programs. My students are always impressed with the data generated in the many reports available. As an instructor, I couldn’t be happier with the ease and plethora of information provided.”

How does it work?

The D&W+ MindApp incorporates demographic data (height, weight, age, gender), similar to most other diet analysis software, both free and paid. As a dietitian, I am concerned with some of the free apps and software available to the public. They can underestimate calorie needs, leading to confusion, under-consumption of calories and nutrients, and potential disordered eating behaviors. A few case examples compared a popular app that recommended anywhere from a 300-600 calorie deficit of energy needs when compared to D&W+. This is not something I am comfortable having my students use to analyze their diets. However, I also use this as a teaching opportunity.

The D&W+ MindApp is intuitive and easy to use, allowing for users to easily find common foods. Users can enter Nutrition Facts information for a “Custom Food” or create their own recipes. This is very important, as there is no possible way for all foods to be included in a diet analysis software program. Students are easily able to enter in foods or recipes they typically consume for a more accurate diet analysis of their personal intake.

Reports help students pinpoint areas where they need improvement

The Reports section of D&W+ is my favorite aspect of D&W+, as students can learn details about their intake and find areas of their diet to focus on for improvement. Some of my favorite Reports include the Macronutrient Ranges, Energy Balance, MyPlate Analysis, DRI report, and the Intake vs. Goals. The Intake vs. Goals report compares the student’s intake to proper nutritional recommendations (based on their personal demographic data) that cannot be matched by other diet analysis software programs. The data is presented in a clear, attractive, and intuitive manner, allowing students to easily identify their strengths and weaknesses from their entered dietary intake.

There are many other reports for instructors to choose from based on their pedagogy. I personally like the Combination Report, as it combines the details from all reports into one. Users can simply uncheck certain reports if they do not want that information included in their submission. Very easy!

Students learn differently when they can apply information learned in class to their own dietary habits. I often see acknowledgement and ownership of current habits turning into positive dietary changes after engaging in a diet analysis assignment. They feel empowered when they begin to understand how important nutrition is to health, and how they can take charge of their own health by reading the Reports of their personal dietary intake from D&W+. This is a Nutrition instructor’s dream! I am grateful there is such a thorough, user-friendly, and intuitive diet analysis program like D&W+. I would highly recommend it to other Nutrition instructors. It educates students, saves instructor grading time,  and  is trustworthy.

Note : The Diet & Wellness Plus diet analysis MindApp covered in this blog post reflects the experience found within Nutrition and Health MindTap  products. Review our recommended titles that are available with MindTap .

Check out these videos to dive into the Diet & Wellness Plus MindApp and find out how you can use this diet analysis tool to help your students deepen their understanding of how nutrition relates to their personal health goals:

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Presenting the New and Improved

Nutritioncalc plus dietary analysis tool.

NutritionCalc Plus, available for all Nutrition titles in McGraw Hill Connect®, is a powerful dietary analysis tool featuring more than 106,000 foods from the industry’s leading source: ESHA Research. This nutrient database is comprised of data from manufacturers, restaurants, grocery stores, literature sources, and the latest USDA Standard Reference for the most precise and accurate information.

Click here and tell us about your teaching style, and we’ll match you up with content

What's New? Plenty.

We’ve added plenty of relevant content to this already powerful tool:

• New user-friendly design
• Augmented database of foods – over 106,000 items
• Progressive Web app w/mobile-friendly features
• New Profile features – maintain weight, non-binary gender option, and caloric intake warning if under 1200 calories
• Avatars – choose from over 200

Timesaving Auto-graded Assignments in Connect

Assess My Diet provides auto-graded personal analysis assignments in Connect that complement the NutritionCalc Plus tool. Students are directed to answer questions about their dietary patterns based on generated reports from NutritionCalc Plus. These assignments include Dietary Guidance, Carbohydrates, Proteins, Water, Vitamins, Energy Balance, Lipids, and Minerals. Created and reviewed by instructors like you, they are relevant, current, interesting, and easy to implement.

Easily Assignable, Auto-graded Case Studies in Connect

Assignable and auto graded with NutritionCalc Plus reports, these case studies are designed to help students apply their knowledge and gain further insight into dietary analysis. They can also be used with students who have body-image issues. They include:

• Bone Health
• Breastfeeding
• Constipation
• Dietary Guidelines
• Fad Diets (Paleo)
• 5,000 Calorie Diet
• High Protein Diet
• Mediterranean Diet
• Nutrient Density
• Okinawan Diet
• School Age Diet
• Weight Gain
• Weightlifting

Best Practices: Using Assess My Diet in your Course

Click here  for detailed instruction on how best to use Assess My Diet. Click here  to see how McGraw Hill Connect & NutritionCalc Plus helped modify student dietary patterns.

Get Started

Follow this link to register and receive further information about NutritionCalc Plus.

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1.7: Diet Analysis Activity - Foundations for Self Reflection

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Learning Objectives

• Consider questions for exploring and assessing personal dietary intake.

Why are we doing this?

The Diet Analysis Activities in this textbook will give you the opportunity to take what you are learning about Nutrition Science and apply it in your own life. They will lead you to discover important details about the foods and beverages you consume, and encourage you to consider the impact of your nutrition choices on your personal health.

There are four key Learning Objectives that these activities are designed to help you achieve. These show what you should know, or be able to do, when you complete all of the Diet Analysis Activities. You should be able to:

• evaluate the nutrient composition of foods and beverages.
• compare personal dietary intake and physical activity with current recommendations.
• develop meal and activity plans that meet nutritional needs.
• choose nutrient-dense foods and beverages in appropriate amounts to promote health and reduce disease risk.

The main point: when we understand the importance of nutrition and healthful lifestyles, and when we know what types and amounts of nutrients our bodies need, we can make choices that help us to achieve and maintain good health. Living well begins with eating well.

These activities are meant to provide basic information and encourage exploration, not dictate specific diets or substitute for professional medical advice. Please keep your own medical and dietary situation in mind, and seek assistance from a qualified healthcare professional such as a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist or a Doctor of Medicine to address your specific needs.

Diet and health are often challenging subjects to discuss, for many reasons. Family and cultural background, personal experiences, social influences, and individual beliefs can all contribute to these challenges. If you have concerns about evaluating your own diet, weight, activity patterns, and health status, please talk to your instructor and/or a qualified healthcare professional. Assignments may be modified or alternate assignments may be available to help you meet these learning objectives without focusing on your own personal health.

Foundations for Self-Reflection

The first step in dietary assessment is to observe and collect information. Start by thinking about basic questions like the ones listed below. Try to remain objective, and avoid assigning value to specific foods and dietary patterns, such as "good" or "bad", "high" or "low". Simply notice the types of foods and beverages you choose on a typical day. Think like a scientist looking for evidence, or a detective gathering clues.

• On a typical day, when do you first take a drink or eat a bite of food?
• What types of beverages do you drink?
• Where do you eat meals or snacks?
• Do you enjoy flavors that are salty, spicy, sweet, tart, or savory?
• Are your foods colorful? What colors are the foods you eat most often?
• Do you usually eat alone or with other people?
• What temperatures are the foods and beverages you consume?
• How do you feel about various textures of foods, such as crunchy or chewy?
• Did you notice the appearance and aroma of a food before you took a bite?
• How did your body feel before eating a meal, compared to after you finished eating?

Attributions

This content was developed by Christine Bisson, MS, RD, as part of the California Community College Open Educational Resources Initiative. It is is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License .