The intended out come of the diet I have chosen is to assist in a steady weight loss, while still enjoying tasty food. The target group is people who want to lose weight, but experience difficulties in sticking to a diet. The person I have used in my data entry is a 43-year-old female who weighs 85kg, is 157 cm tall and has a light activity level.
- Graphs
The 5 graphs below have been taken form the Food Works program.
These graphs show the intake of each individual nutrient over the five-day period
The graph below shows the grand total of each of the nutrients over the 5-day period. (See the next page)
- Analysis
From the graphs, it is quite obvious that this diet does not provide a constant balance between the nutrients over the 5 days. The most interesting factor I have noticed about this diet is the dramatic variances in the ratios of energy provided by protein, fat and carbohydrates over the five days. For a healthy balanced diet, it is recommended that carbohydrates should provide 60% of your daily energy requirements, protein should provide 10% and fat should provide 30%. As you can see from the graphs, the ratios did not match the recommended percentages on any of the days. The graph for day 2 is the most shocking of all the energy ratio graphs. This is because the Carbohydrate level on this day is only about 36% while the percentage of fat is around 43%. This is absolutely ridiculous for someone who is trying to reduce their weight because fats should be reduced, not increased. The lack of carbohydrates on this day would leave the person feeling very hungry because they are not consuming large amounts of foods that provide a filling effect. On day 3 and day 5, the carbohydrate levels are very high, causing the person to consume too much energy on those days. According to the FoodWorks programme, this person should be consuming approximately 8622kj per day but on days 3 and 5 the total energy intake is over 126600kj on both days. This will definitely cause weight gain rather than weight loss. The percentage of protein provided by this diet was far more than the recommended 10% on each day. This is could be contributing the high fat levels, as most protein rich animal products are high in saturated fat. The high protein levels are also likely to increase blood-cholesterol levels.
This diet does not provide a steady intake of nutrients over the five days. Firstly, the recommended daily intake of dietary fibre is 25 to 30 grams per day, which was easily reached on all five days, which is good. Although, it is a concern that the amount of fibre consumed was 100 times the RDI on day 1 and 5. Too much fibre is likely to cause diarrhoea, which then decreases the absorption of other essential vitamins because food passes through too quickly. The high level of fibre is likely to assist in weight loss. The amount of Calcium in this diet was great, especially for a weight loss diet, and the RDI for this specific person (800mg) was reached on all five days. Due to the fact the Calcium levels were so high, especially on days 2 and 4, this person can afford to reduce their consumption of dairy products on these days too reduce their fat intake. The Iron levels in this diet were also very good and the RDI of 12-16mg was comfortably reached on all five days. The amount of Vitamin C in this diet is extremely high which may be a concern. The RDI for this vitamin is only 30mg, but this diet provides far more than that, especially on day 3 the amount of Vitamin C was 30000mg. This diet will cause the person to overdose on Vitamin C, which will cause gastric problems (eg. nausea, stomach cramps and diarrhoea) and will also cause a deficiency in Vitamin B12. It is also likely to cause oxalate stones to form in the kidneys and bladder because the dose is more than 800mg per day.
Recommendations
In my opinion, this is not a very healthy diet, although it is possible to improve it. I would definitely aim to reduce the amount of fat in this diet. For example, instead of eating a fruit scone for breakfast (day 2), this could be replaced with a low fat breakfast cereal with skim milk. The amount of fat in this diet could easily be lowered by excluding salad dressings or by at least using a low fat alternative. I would increase the amount of carbohydrates eaten during breakfast and morning tea, and reduce the amount of carbohydrates eaten at dinnertime. This would make the person feel full and stop hunger during the day, ultimately reducing the temptation to over-eat. It would also allow more time during the day for the person to use up the energy they obtain from carbohydrates, assisting in weight loss. This could be done without even changing what the person is eating, for example on day 1, instead of having a Caesar salad for lunch, and pasta with meal sauce for dinner, you could swap these two meals so that you have the pasta earlier in the day. The amount of protein in this diet should be slightly reduced. This could be done by reducing the portion size of the meat in some of the meals. For example in the turkey and ham salad (lunch, day 5), instead of having 20 grams of each of the meats, you could either exclude one of the meats altogether or have just 10 grams of each of the meats. It is also important to reduce the amount of Vitamin C in this diet. I would do this by reducing the serve of orange juice at breakfast (days 1,3,4) from 120mL to 60mL and replace the other 60mL with water. I would also avoid having orange juice and citrus fruit in the same day.
- Strengths and Weaknesses of the diet
As the total energy intake on each day is so high, it is very unlikely that this diet will cause weight loss. In the short term, the person on this diet is likely to experience diarrhoea, nausea, stomach cramps and a deficiency in Vitamin B12. If this diet was continued, the person could possibly suffer from high cholesterol levels, vitamin deficiencies and may develop oxalate stones in their kidney or bladder. Strangely this diet will also cause weight gain if it is continued! This diet provides a lot of variety from day to day and the meals are quite sophisticated and would taste quite nice. Cost is an issue in this diet because some of the ingredients include smoked salmon and Brie cheese which are quite expensive. Most of the ingredients for the meals are available all year round which is good and some of the meals include a vegetable or fruit “of your choice” so they can be modified based on availability. In the long term, if the diet was stopped and the user had different eating patterns it is likely that they could either gain weight if their eating patterns worsened or lose weight if their energy intake was closer to the recommended ratio.
- The role of energy expenditure
As this diet is high in kilojoules, the user would need to be very active and expend a lot of energy if they want to lose weight. The Basal Metabolic rate of the person this diet is based on is 7711.2 kJ/day. This comes to 38556 kJ over the five-day period, plus 10% of total energy from thermic effect comes to a total of 75684.23 kJ over the five days. The total average intake of energy over the five days is a huge 171282.3 KJ. This means that the person is consuming an excess of 19120 KJ per day! To be able to lose weight on this diet you would need to be extremely active. For example to burn up the excess 19120 KJ you would need to cycle for over 5 hours per day, which is not possible for a lot of people. Obviously this is a very poor example of a weight loss diet and is definitely not suitable for someone who is overweight and only does light exercise. This diet is very likely to cause a rapid weight gain and should not be recommended.
