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12. Sorting Foods Already Chosen

You can sort the list of foods you have chosen according to nutrient content, food groups, the extent to which they may help you meet nutritional goals, or cost.

Objectives

After this lesson, you will be able to sort the list of foods you have already chosen:

so that the foods with the most of that nutrient will then be at the top of the list.
so that similar foods are grouped together (ie milk beverages, eggs, breakfast cereals,...)
so that the foods that most help you meet nutrient recommendations are closest to the top of the list.
so that foods are arranged according to cost with the most expensive foods at the top of the list.

You will also be able to:

View the amount of the sort nutrient in each food.
Understand how sorting can indicate the nutritional relevance of foods you have already chosen.
Understand the differences between the sorts described in lesson 11 and the sorts described in this lesson.
View the cost of each food.

Lesson

Lesson 1 described the Do, Learn, Improve, Record cycle for which FoodFocus was designed. The Do (choose foods), Learn (review nutrient analysis results) and the Record (using files and printing) activities are relatively straightforward. The Improve phase requires more understanding and judgement. Lesson 8 described how to make changes by changing food quantities and deleting foods. This lesson helps you identify the changes that will be most effective to meet goals. Sorting can be a powerful tool to help develop nutritional understanding and judgement. When you select Sort from the main menu line, several options are presented.

There are two basic differences between the sorting described in this lesson and the sorting described in lesson 11:

Sort Food List- Use the Sort option on the main screen menu line to sort the foods on the main screen. The Sort option in a window listing foods as a result of using Food by Type, by Search, or by Nutrient on the main menu, will only sort foods within that window.
Quantity Used in Sort- When you use the Sort option on the main screen menu line you sort the foods on the main screen based on the actual quantity of each food you selected. When you use the Sort option within a window you created as a result of using Food by Type, by Search or by Nutrient on the main menu (lesson 11), foods are sorted based on a 100 grams of that food.

There are three different types of sorting:

By Protein, By Fat, By Carbohydrate....Most of the sort options listed under Sort on the main menu line allow you to sort the foods listed on the main screen (lesson 1b) according to the amount of one specific nutrient in each food. After each sort, the amount of that nutrient in the food at the top of the list (the one that contains the most of that nutrient) is shown on the bottom line of the main menu. As you select other foods in the list (so that they are highlighted in blue) by using the up/down arrow or by clicking on them with the mouse, the bottom line is updated to show the amount of the sort nutrient in that food:

The following example indicates how such a sort would reorder the food list.

Initial Food List:                                              WHEN EACH FOOD IS SELECTED
                                                                THE BOTTOM LINE TELLS YOU:      
1 unit  of 250 ML       of COFFEE, BREWED, MADE WITH DISTILLED WATER                    (COST DETAIL)
1 unit  of 1 MUFFIN     of FAST FOOD, BREAKFAST, ENGLISH MUFFIN WITH EGG+CHEESE+BACON   (COST DETAIL)
1 unit  of 1 BURGER     of HAMBURGER, LARGE, SINGLE PATTY, PLAIN                        (COST DETAIL)
1 unit of large (30-40) of FAST FOOD, POTATO, FRENCH FRIED IN BEEF TALLOW               (COST DETAIL)
1 unit  of 355 ML CAN   of SOFT DRINKS, COLA TYPE BEVERAGE WITH ASPARTAME               (COST DETAIL)

After Sorting by Total Fat

                                                                WHEN EACH FOOD IS SELECTED
                                                                THE BOTTOM LINE TELLS YOU:
1 unit  of 1 BURGER     of HAMBURGER, LARGE, SINGLE PATTY, PLAIN                         22.9 G FAT
1 unit  of 1 MUFFIN     of FAST FOOD, BREAKFAST, ENGLISH MUFFIN WITH EGG+CHEESE+BACON    19.8 G FAT 
1 unit of large (30-40) of FAST FOOD, POTATO, FRENCH FRIED IN BEEF TALLOW                18.5 G FAT
1 unit  of 355 ML CAN   of SOFT DRINKS, COLA TYPE BEVERAGE WITH ASPARTAME                 0.0 G FAT
1 unit  of 250 ML       of COFFEE, BREWED, MADE WITH DISTILLED WATER                      0.0 G FAT

After Sorting by Sodium

                                                                WHEN EACH FOOD IS SELECTED
                                                                THE BOTTOM LINE TELLS YOU:
1 unit  of 1 MUFFIN     of FAST FOOD, BREAKFAST, ENGLISH MUFFIN WITH EGG+CHEESE+BACON    784.0 MG SODIUM
1 unit  of 1 BURGER     of HAMBURGER, LARGE, SINGLE PATTY, PLAIN                         474.0 MG SODIUM
1 unit of large (30-40) of FAST FOOD, POTATO, FRENCH FRIED IN BEEF TALLOW                187.4 MG SODIUM
1 unit  of 355 ML CAN   of SOFT DRINKS, COLA TYPE BEVERAGE WITH ASPARTAME                 21.3 MG SODIUM
1 unit  of 250 ML       of COFFEE, BREWED, MADE WITH DISTILLED WATER                       2.5 MG SODIUM

by Food Type- Sorts foods according to the food groupings listed under Food by Type on the menu line. This sort is useful when you want to put similar foods (ie milk beverages, eggs, breakfast cereals,...) together. For example, with a 7 day food recall, you could use this sort to quickly review how many milk products or fruits and vegetables were in the food list.

by Need- While the previous sorts considered only one factor when foods were sorted,this sort considers what change in nutrients would help you meet your goal (Recommended Nutrient Intake and other guidelines) and what nutrients are provided by each food. This sort attempts to order foods such that foods at the top of the list most help (or least hinder) meeting nutrient goals and foods near the bottom of the list least help (or most hinder) those goals. One strategy you can use is to see what happens if you get more of foods at the top of the list (or similar foods) and get less of (or none of) foods at the bottom of the list. The by Need sort is most useful when the food list is reasonably diverse.

by Cost-

Review Topics

How could you find out what ingredients in a recipe contribute the most fat?
How could you arrange the foods in a grocery shopping list according to the amount of folate provided?
How could you rearrange a grocery list to group foods according to grocery store layout (meats, dairy, breakfast cereals, produce)?
If you sort a grocery list using "by Need" several times as you are adding foods to it, will the order of the foods always be the same?
How could you find out, for a daily food recall, what nutrient is least in agreement with nutrition guidelines and then see how each of the foods in the recall contributes?

Independent Practice

For a diverse food list, if you repeatedly sort by need and add more of foods (or of similar foods) at the top of the list while getting less of (or deleting) foods at the bottom of the sorted list, does the overall nutrient content (happy face) improve? Is this a useful strategy?

Coming Next....

How to define how many people will eat the foods in the food list.... Recommended Nutrient Intake.....

GO TO....Home| About | Version 3.2 | Lesson Ideas | Lesson Index | back: "Sorting Foods Selected by Type, by Search, by Nutrient" | next: " People and Recommended Nutrient Intake" |

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