Sat 4 Sep 2010
Keeping a Food Diary
Posted by admin under Health, Health Advice, Healthcare, foods
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A food diary is a way of discovering hidden causes of your health problems. After you have kept it for a while, you will be able to detect patterns that you were never able to see before. In fact, the whole process of finding out what is going on becomes, as Sherlock Holmes might say, “Elementary, my dear Watson.”
If you or your medical adviser suspect that your health problems are caused by intolerance to food in, one of the best ways to find out for sure is to keep a food diary. That’s unless you are happy to go for total exclusion of all possible candidates followed by careful, individual re-introduction after at least two weeks’ total abstinence.
Most of us are not really up for the deprivation routine, so here’s a basic explanation of what’s involved in keeping a food diary. Doing this should help you work out what you’re reacting to (if anything) - bearing in mind that more than one food group may be involved.
The first thing to do is to get yourself a suitable notebook. Probably the best type would be an A5 one - around 20cm (8 “) tall by 15cm (6″) wide, spiral-bound So that it lies flat when you open it. Get one bound on the side, not at the top.
Use one page a day. will divide the page into two columns (a simple fold do). At the top of each page, write that day’s date.
The left hand column is for the food you eat. You need to keep a note of everything you eat or drink every day. This sounds like a bit of a pain, and truthfully it can be, but it’s better than cutting everything out on the off-chance.
Write down the time, the type of food, if it’s a branded product, the brand, and how much you ate of it (by volume or weight). So write down the mood you were in when you ate it.
Be specific. For example, do not just write down “potatoes”. If you eat chips (French fries), write down that you ate chips (French fries). If you ate mashed potatoes, write down that you ate mash (and the brand if it came out of a packet).




