Assignment Tips

We suggest that you begin work on your assignment before you take your mid-term exam. The same material will be covered on both, and the assignment will give you a chance to work through the concepts. The assignment will also help you do well on the final exam. Students who complete the assignment at the suggested time tend to do better on both exams.

• Mark which day is your work/school day (a typical day in your schedule), and which is your day off (e.g., a weekend day or a vacation day). You may have to tell us why the two days differ, as far as your eating habits go.
• In your food record, be as detailed as possible, and write down the details. For example, instead of recording a “carrot,” record “one raw carrot, baby-sized.” This detail will help you when you enter your diet into Diet Analysis Plus.
• Check the serving sizes from Canada’s Food Guide. For students who started the course in June 2007 or later, make sure you use the NEW (2007) version. Students often err in recording servings of vegetables and fruit. A serving size is 1 medium fruit or vegetable (½ cup/125 mL) or 1 cup (250 mL) of salad (salads have a lot of air, and lettuce is low in many nutrients compared with other veggies). Grains is another common place to make a mistake: different choices have different serving sizes.
• The assignment booklet says that you can use the codes in Appendix H of the textbook and enter these into the Diet Analysis Plus software. This is not correct: these codes do not work.
• For combination foods, such as sandwiches, soups, and stews, break them down into their main ingredients and estimate what portion of a serving of each item you ate. These foods should be entered separately into the Diet Analysis Plus software.
• Sometimes a food will not be listed in the software. In that case substitute the closest available food. However, if the substitution is significantly different than the food you consumed (e.g., low-salt bacon instead of regular bacon or canned vegetables instead of fresh), make a note of it in your assignment, or you may lose marks for inaccuracy. If a substitute affects your diet analysis (e.g., throws off your sodium intake), note that when you discuss your results.
• Read the questions carefully, and answer them precisely. Interpret “calculate,” as “show your work.”
• Consider the number of points awarded for a given question. If it’s 10 points, make sure you give a 10-point answer.
• Choose an appropriate number of decimal places when you discuss numbers. For example, with energy intake, round off numbers to the nearest kcal. With vitamins and minerals, one or two decimal places may be appropriate, since these volumes tend to be much smaller, requiring more precision for the values to be meaningful.
• A common mistake is to exaggerate the importance of minor deviations from 100% of the RDA. If your intake of a vitamin or mineral is 70% of the RDA, this doesn’t necessarily indicate a deficiency. Focus on real problems, especially where intakes are far from what is recommended.
• For Part IV, question 6, consider whether your new diet is better as a whole. Have you fixed some problems but created new ones? For example, is your intake of energy now so low that your energy intake would be inadequate if you ate such a diet? Is your intake of polyunsaturated fats almost deficient?
• If you are confused about something, ask your tutor. Don’t just hope for the best.
• Put your name, the course name and number, your student ID number, and the date of submission on your report, and include page numbers.