Reflections
- What have you learnt about your eating habits?
- Do you consider your diet a healthy one? Why?
- Are the suggested nutritional tools useful? How?
- Why is your suggested one dish meal healthy?
I have learnt many interesting things about my eating habits through this PT. One thing I learnt from this PT is that I consume too much meat and that is what contributes to the saturated fat intake and thus, I should aim to reduce it. This PT has also made me more aware of the food I consume daily and its nutritional values. Before this, I did not take much notice of the food I consumed and did not care much if it was unhealthy or not. Now however, I think twice before I eat my meals.
I do not consider my diet to be a healthy one. Through the Food Intake Assessment, it can be clearly seen that my intake of sodium, cholesterol and saturated fat are higher than the recommended amount. This is extremely unhealthy as they could lead to many health problems. Excessive intake of sodium can lead to hypertension or high blood pressure which might result in stroke or heart attacks *shudder* Also, cholesterol and saturated fat can raise our blood pressure, which might lead to heart disease. Thus, this unhealthy diet has to be stopped and I should try hard to reduce the meat dishes and increase the vegetable dishes I consume
One way I am planning to reduce my sodium intake is to add lesser salt in the dishes I consume. Also, cutting down on the snacks that I eat will also help as potato chips are high in salt content. To reduce the cholesterol and saturated fat intake, I intend to resist the temptation of eating chicken wings whenever my grandmother cooks it as it is high in both cholesterol and saturated fat because of the oil and fried skin (source of saturated fat).
The suggested tools found on the Health Promotion Board website proved to be very useful and user-friendly in analysing my three day diet. I especially liked the fact that the Energy and Nutrient Composition of Food tool is localised so many of the dishes I consume can be found :> Also, the Food Intake Assessment tool is very simple and useful as all we need to do in key in the time + food we eat and *bam* we get our analysis! This is so much easier than if we had to do it manually and total it up to see if we exceeded our recommended intake. Moreover, the tool not only shows us the analysis of our food intake, but also gives us advice on what to cut down on and what we should increase our consumption of. They also provide information on the detrimental effects of having too much of something (eg. sodium and saturated fat).
My suggested one-dish meal is healthy as it is not cooked with any oil and also contains much vegetables and no meat! This is good for me because not only do I have to reduce my intake of cholesterol and saturated fat, I also have to increase my intake of dietary fibre and calcium! The leafy vegetables contribute to the dietary fibre and calcium and by cutting down on the meat I eat, I reduce my cholesterol and saturated fat intake! (: Only a little salt is used in this dish to give it a little taste instead of the common method of using chicken stock. This is healthy as chicken stock contains a high level of sodium and that would be bad for me as my sodium intake is already more than two times the recommended amount (which calls for my immediate attention to reduce it to the best of my ability).
This PT is really meaningful and from now on, I will definitely be more watchful of my diet to avoid the detrimental health problems!
