The food pyramid is a basic guide for planning your food intake. It suggests the number of servings of each type of food which should be consumed in a day to ensure you eat a balanced diet. People often think they are eating a balanced diet until they look at the food guide and analyze their eating patterns. For five days, I made a log of everything I ate, where I bought the food, where I ate it, what I was doing when I ate it, and who I was with when I ate. These are all factors which affect our food intake patterns. They are also affected by such things as media advertising, price and availability of foods, convenience, and limitations on time. These will all be discussed below as I analyze my eating patterns for five days.
My eating pattern is pretty consistent. I eat three meals a day, breakfast, lunch and dinner. I do not snack in between meals. I usually have breakfast about 7am on days when I am going to be home all day, and at 4:30 am on days when I have to attended classes. Breakfast is usually a bagel and cream cheese and/or oatmeal. I have lunch around 12.30 pm if I am home, and sometimes I skip lunch altogether. I have dinner, usually at home, between 5:30 pm and 7 pm.
Lunch and dinner are usually fairly substantial meals, e.g. for lunch I might have baked chicken breast with gravy and mashed potatoes or spaghetti with meat sauce and apple pie if I am at home, or a chicken submarine sandwich and cookies if I am out. For dinner home, I may have a ham and cheese omelet with hash browns and toast, or chicken breast with mashed potatoes, a biscuit, and pound cake, or spaghetti with meat sauce, spinach salad and garlic bread, with apple pie with cream for dessert. I may have grilled chicken with a Portobello mushroom, roasted potatoes and green beans. The only thing I drink with meals and throughout the day is water and diet Mountain Dew. I drink mainly the diet soda, sometimes as much as six 12 oz cans ...