Food consumption
It is important that you eat a balanced and varied diet.
Eating the recommended number of serves from each of the food groups, including a range from within each group, will help supply you with the essential nutrients and active non-nutrients you require to maintain good health.
Many phytochemical give plants their colours. Including a variety coloured fruits and vegetables in your diet supplies your body with a variety of phytochemicals.
Your daily diet
Choose an average day to record how balanced and varied your diet generally is.
Record the type and amount of foods you eat over a period of a day using the Excel spreadsheet Daily diet tool (.xlsx 28kB).
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Provide your personal details – name, age and gender.
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Classify the foods you eat into the food groups. Each coloured cell has a pull-down menu to select specific food.
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Enter the number of serves of each food group you have at each meal. Learn about serve sizes by reading the How much is a serve? section on the The Department of Health's Australian Guide to Healthy Eating website.
Measuring up
Assess your diet against the Recommended Daily Serves (RDS) for each of the food groups – fruits, vegetables, cereals, meat, dairy and other.
OPen your copy of the Daily diet tool spreadsheet and compare the recommendations on the RDS page with your totals on the Food intake page. Do your totals match the RDS?
Highlight each Total cell either green (meet RDS requirements), orange (close to RDS requirements) or red (under RDS requirements).
Injecting colour
Compare the range of the fruits and vegetables in your Daily diet tool to the colour chart.
Identify where you are consuming an adequate amount of fruits and vegetables.
Highlight where you need to increase your consumption of fruits and vegetables.