A Food Diary That Tracks More Than Just Calories

Time’s photo essay, “What the World Eats”, made me wonder what my typical food week looks like. So as of last Monday, I’ve been writing down everything I eat and when. For example, today’s log so far looks like

• 6:15am: Two glasses of filtered water
• 6:30am: Earl Gray Tea with organic semi-skimmed milk
• 7:00am: Organic porridge oats with an organic Gala apple, organic raisins and organic un-sweetened soy milk

This started as a simple project, but it’s given me so much more to think about than just my week in food:

• I eat a lot. And often.
• It’s much more fun to track my diet this way than to tediously count calories.
• The diary is growing in detail. For instance, on February 25th I wrote “Coffee with milk”. On February 29th, I wrote “Clipper Assam tea and Tesco Organic Un-sweetened soy milk”. Today I started noting which foods were organic.
• I am still fighting an addiction to Diet Soda, which has only grown worse by my discovery of Pepsi Max, a beverage I shamefully find delicious.
• Food is much more than a sum of its protein, fat and carbohydrate calories.

Calorie tracking is useful – this is how I painstakingly learned portion control. But I wonder if this could have been achieved by tracking food on this level instead? After all, isn’t our foods’ variety, origin, and quality just as important to our health as our foods’ calories?

This has been such a fun and fascinating exercise that I think I’ll keep it up. Until now, I’ve logged everything in a Google document but have moved it over to the forums under a new topic, “Food Diaries” (an idea stolen from the FatFree Vegan Board – I hope she doesn’t mind; non-vegans need a place to log their food, too!).

If you’re interested in joining in, feel free to start a new thread with your diary. I’d love to see what other people’s food week/month/year looks like. And I’d also love to hear your ideas on food tracking in general. What works? What matters? What’s easiest?

Related posts:

1. Dear Diary, I’m through counting calories
2. Food Diary: Grilled Tofu for Two
3. Food Diary: Tofu Tip from Ruth
4. Food Diary
5. Visualize Your Food with Foodsel

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