Minerals (Calcium can be obtained from milk; phosporus from sea foods and milk; potassium from vegetables; sodium from a variety of foods because it is artificially added etc)– inorganic elements and compounds such as iron that are needed in the synthesis of important compounds such as haemoglobin.
Vitamins (A can be obtained from fish, oil, milk; D fromfish oil and dairy products; E from green vegetables; K also from green vegetables; B1 from liver, kidney; B2 from yeast extract and dairy products; B3 from meat, wholemeal flour; B5 and B6 are present in a variety of foods; B12 from meat and dairy foods; M from fish and green vegetables; H from kidney and liver; C from fruits and green vegetables) – organic compounds required in small quantities for good health.
Water – If a person does not ingest sufficient quantities of water they become dehydrated and lose energy. Drinking too much Soft drinks and alcoholic drinks can reduce the water content of the body because they contain diuretics.
Fibre (present in fruits, vegetables and cereals) – consists of a mixture of indigestible compounds mainly derived from plant cell walls.
Most of the people, especially children, do not know what their perfect Diet is. They have no idea of what is bad and what is good, they just eat, that causes a lot of disease cases, such as obese and high cholesterol.
Nowadays there have been a lot of cases of girls who want to lose weight by not eating at all. Leading to anorexic disease.
A balance diet is an equilibrium between the food intake and the energy expenditure. It should have the needs for growth, replacement and healthy functioning.
The energy of food is measured in kilojoules of kilocalorie.
1kcal = 4.2kJ
The recommended daily intake of calories depends on a variety of factors, such as age and lifestyle.
Normally, young people need more energy than adult people; and active people need more than sedentary people. Males usually need more than females, but a pregnant or lacting woman need up to 25% more food than they would at other times.
Not exactly, a female teenager needs 9000kcal when a 20-year-old man needs 11000kcal.
The recommended daily allowances (RDAs) for vitamins depend on the different kinds. Vitamin C is required 40mg daily for an adult.
Protein also varies, but being a typical recommendation around 40-50g per day.
So that people know what they should and shoud not eat, many “food pyramids” (illustrative pyramids showing the basic groups of food and how they should been eaten by them) have been designed so that it is facilitated to people to see what they should eat and how much of it. There are many different pyramids but in general all of them show the same. An example of a pyramid like that is this one:
Source:
A good diet consists of approximately 15% of proteins, 30% of fats and 55% of carbohydrates of the daily diet.
For more specific details, there is an Health Eating Guide for Teenagers at the attachments.
There is this formula called BMI (Body Mass Index), which tells to the person if she is underweight, acceptable, overweight and obese. It follows:
BMI =
So, mine would be:
BMI= 63/3.02
BMI= 20.86
When this has been calculated, a number will be there. The classification is approximately like this:
BMI Category
< 20 underweight
20 – 24 acceptable
25 – 30 overweight
> 30 obese
But this formula is not valid 100% for all persons. These results may vary from person to person.
To know how many calories one need daily just use the following formula:
Men: BMR = 66 + (13.7 x W) + (5 x H) - (6.8 x Age) = Daily calories required
Women: BMR = 665 + (9.6 x W) + (1.8 x H) - (4.7 x Age) = Daily calories needs
Where:
W = weight in Kg
H = Height in cm (1 inch = 2.54 cm)
Age = Years
Multiply your BMR by an activity factor, which more closely suits your lifestyle:
- Sedentary - none or very little exercise = BMR X 1.2
- Light activity for average of 2 days/week = BMR X 1.375
- Moderate activity level exercising 4 days/week = BMR X 1.5
- High activity levels exercise & sports more than 6 days/week = BMR X 1.7
- Higher activity levels = up to 2 x BMR
Meaning that I would need:
BMR = 665 + (9.6 x 63) + (1.8 x 174) - (4.7 x 17) = 1503.1kcal - Daily calories needed
As I am a moderate activity level exercising person, I multiply my BMR by 1.5, which is equal to 2254.6kcal per day.
This should be my perfect diet for a day.
HYPOTHESIS:
I am sure that my diet is not perfect because I have to eat lunch at school, which is not great. That is why I just eat junk, like hot dog and cheeseburger, rather than a meal at lunch. And I wish I could do more sports than I do.
Therefore my Hypothesis is that the calories and fats that I intake daily are not the balanced diet I need.
METHODOLOGY:
For this laboratory I had to write down everything I ate in four days. Write down the calories consumed, the proteins, carbohydrates, and all the nutritional facts.
And use websites to search for food pyramids, a food tracker and discover what is the ideal diet for myself. For that I, mostly, used the website www.nutriotiondata.com
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION:
After doing this laboratory, I really notice how my diet is chaos. To help my health, I really should eat more vegetable and fruits and have the right 3 meals per day.
My hypothesis is right, my diet is not good at all.
My perfect diet should be eating around 2254.6 calories per day.
According to the formula given in the theory:
BMR = 665 + (9.6 x 63) + (1.8 x 174) - (4.7 x 17) = 1503.1kcal - Daily calories needed
As I am a moderate activity level exercising person, I multiply my BMR by 1.5, which is equal to 2254.6kcal per day.
On the four days that I wrote down what I ate, I was eating around 1231,7 kcal. Which is a little more than the half of my ideal diet.
Remembering that this has been for only four days. If ate only that amount of calories my whole life I would be really skinny, what I am not. Looking to my BMI= 20.86, which is acceptable.
To see if a person is having a good nutrition, or not, one should make this experiment with a 1 month (at least) diet (a long term diet) so that one can see if its nutrition is good or not.
Another problem of this laboratory is that the nutritional facts of the foods I ate is not accurately, because I had to search them in the Internet, so it did not had the exactly food with the exactly ingredients etc.
On the “Tables” chapter you can see the four days of my research and a total.
Tables:
Four Day Diet Medium:
