Food Diary
I chose a Saturday to track my eating. I have done projects like this in the past, and I always find it interesting because so much of what I eat has no label and contains many ingredients, making it difficult to track contents exactly. For example, on this day my roommates and I made a giant bowl of ceviche for dinner, with fresh speared yellow tail and about a dozen other ingredients. It was too difficult to track every ingredient as several people worked on it. This brings me to a concern I have: When we tell people to closely constrict certain food components, are we sometimes dissuading them from eating fresh whole foods? On the flip side, during this process I thought a lot about how hard it can be to avoid certain food components if you do eat packaged or prepared food. As a new years resolution this year I gave up processed sugar, honey, syrup, and any other incredibly sugar dense foods. I have not regretted it since, but it can make it so difficult to buy certain foods and to eat out. Even things like multigrain flakes and whole grain bread have a surprising amount of sugar in them. When I buy these foods, I have to sort through so many labels to find one that works for me, even at a place like Whole Foods. Added salt is just as ubiquitous, so I imagine It must be very hard for people to select food with that restriction, especially if they shop at a store that doesn’t strive for healthy options.
Breakfast:
Whole wheat bagel with cream cheese, sprouts, tomato, cucumber, and onion
Coffee with cream
Snack:
Smoothie- whole milk yogurt, blueberries, banana, 2% milk
Lunch:
Large Salad- many veggies, sunflower seeds, avocado
dressing- olive oil, garlic, vinegar, hemp seeds, salt and pepper, miso
Dinner:
Ceviche with chips, salad, and beans
Approximate salt for day (not including ceviche): 1,687 mg
Approximate fat for day (not including ceviche): 104.g g
I think it is easier for me to limit salt because we make most food from scratch in our house. I did pretty good on the salt score. I was pretty high for fat though. However, a decent chunk of that came from olive oil and avocado. All in all, I think the take home is that it is very difficult to keep track and restrictions can be very limiting.
