My Food Record
CONCEPT: Keeping a Food Record
BRIEF SUMMARY
Review the components of a food record and why food records are important. Make a food record with pictures.
OBJECTIVES
After completing this activity, children will be able to:
- state the importance of keeping a food record
- give a 24-hour recall indicating: meals and snacks eaten, amount eaten, if food was homemade or from a package or can, and if possible the brand name
- complete a 3-day food record using the concept of quantity within food groups
METHODS
24-hour Food Recall
- Handout one set of the Meal Worksheets (for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack) and the food group pictures to each child.
- Each child will give a 24-hour food recall by remembering what they ate yesterday and cutting out pictures of the food and taping the pictures to the respective breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack sheets. If there is no picture available, they can draw the food. Or if they prefer, they can draw all the foods.
- Discuss each child's set of meal worksheets, stressing important points such as quantity eaten and types of food.
Food Record
Discuss as a group the importance of keeping food records. Why do we keep food records?
- To help us learn the phe values of food
- To help the nutritionist make important decisions about your formula and phe prescription
- To learn how different foods affect your body and your blood phe level
What information should a good food record include?
(the food item, the amount, how it was prepared, the brand name).
Send each child home with three copies of the "My Food Record" handout and a page of star stickers for recording their food intake.
Explain the food record to the children (and their parents). Explain that they use one food record for each day. They put a star next to each food group (under the corresponding meal) each time they eat a food from that category. Work through a practice food record with the children. Encourage them to complete the food records at home and bring them back to clinic.
MATERIALS
- Meal Worksheets (breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack)
- Food Pictures: Variety of pictures of "yes" foods from the food groups (fruits, vegetables, cereals/low protein breads and pastas, formula, miscellaneous/treat/snack foods). For additional types of foods, you can cut out pictures from magazines.
- Scissors
- Tape or Glue
- Pencils / Crayons
- My Food Record worksheet (3 for each child)
- Star stickers
HOME ACTIVITIES
- Complete the 3-day food record at home. Place the food record where your child has easy access to it (i.e. kitchen) and remind him/her to place a star next to the food group that is eaten at each meal.
- Allow your child to assist in simple meal preparation tasks so that he/she can learn what products are purchased and how they are prepared.
- Have a "PKU Cookie Baking Evening" and let your child do all the ingredient measuring so that he/she will become familiar with accurate measuring.