Diet Analysis

What is diet analysis?

This is a method used to analyse your personal diet for the quality of your nutrition of an extensive panel of vitamins, minerals, and energy-producing macronutrients (protein, fat and carbohydrates) in relation to your age, health, body type, gender, and activity.

What are the benefits of diet analysis?

A personalized snapshot of the quality and sufficiency of your nutrition panel based on your individual characteristics is a valuable tool in managing your health. For example, it will give you an objective basis to build your nutritional strengths and improve weaknesses by adjusting your intake of nutrients that are in short-supply in your diet and toning down those nutrients with an unnecessarily large surplus. You can use this information to leverage the special attributes of certain components in foods such as antioxidants for their protective properties, and also use a variety of foods to improve absorption of specific nutrients.

Your dietary analysis is least invasive, simple to do, and a relatively inexpensive option that will highlight potential problems in your diet and quality of nutrition.

The individualized guidance of a skilled dietitian will equip you with the knowledge and tools to correct and protect your nutritional health with confidence.

Nutrition therapy is NOT a ‘one size fits all’ approach. Seek credible advice!

How is the diet analysed?

It requires you to record information about your usual diet habits and food intake. This information is collected in one of several ways:

• Keeping a detailed 3-7-day diary of foods and the quantities you eat
• Completing a food frequency questionnaire, or
• Diet history collected by a dietitian

These details are fed into a data bank of nutrient values of foods to produce a detailed nutrition report of vitamins, minerals, energy producers, and other related components you are consuming.

How is this information helpful?

With the guidance of your dietitian you can use this knowledge to improve your and your family’s quality of nutrition to:

• Correct areas of over or under-nutrition
• Promote health and well-being as you transition into different phases of your life.
• Reduce risks of disease related to nutrition such as obesity, diabetes, cardiac health, cancer, and high blood pressure
• Manage health conditions that require diet as an important part of the treatment such as food intolerances and allergies, anemias, diabetes, heart conditions, and kidney disease
• Improve individual performance under specific life circumstances related to stress, travel, and physical activity. This is especially useful for athletes, business, and other professionals
• make necessary adjustments as your nutritional needs evolve throughout your lifetime

How often should you have your diet assessed?

Regular checks, two to three times a year is recommended, if no major concerns have been identified. It is a good way to help you stay on track, make you aware, and to stay ahead of potential problems before they develop or advance. If you are addressing specific nutrition issues, then more frequent follow-up may be necessary. This can be determined jointly, by you and your dietitian.

Quality nutrition is not a ‘one time’ event but a life-long commitment.