5. Choosing Food by Type- Using Food Groups

This lesson begins a new section of the tutorial- in addition to using this tutorial in a browser, you will be asked to run FoodFocus at the same time. By switching between the tutorial and FoodFocus you will be able to immediately practise what you have learned. Doing this may be a little confusing at first so we suggest that you at least read through this lesson once before you start. You may even want to print a copy (under File|Print on your browser) for easy reference. For the remaining lessons in this tutorial it will be useful to run FoodFocus at the same time as you are doing the tutorial.

Lessons 5, 6 and 7 are similar in that they describe ways to choose foods. Lesson 5 helps you choose foods by food type.

Objectives

After this lesson, you will be able to:

Select foods using "Food by Type" on the main menu.
Identify the number of food groupings used in FoodFocus and the advantages and disadvantages of using "Food by Type"

Lesson

Go to FoodFocus. To see both this tutorial and FoodFocus at the same time, you may want to resize this tutorial window to occupy the left one-third to one-half of the screen. After you start the FoodFocus program, you can grab the FoodFocus window and have it occupy the right part of the screen by clicking on the FoodFocus Version 3 title line, holding down the left mouse button and dragging the FoodFocus window to the right. Depending on your screen resolution and the way you want to work, you may want to have this tutorial screen and the FoodFocus screen overlap. You can then go from one to the other, by clicking on the program you want to use or you can hold down the ALT key and press TAB to get Windows to switch between this tutorial and FoodFocus.
Using the mouse click on "Food by Type" on the menu line and you will get a drop down box listing food groups. Some of the food groups are followed by arrows indicating that they are subdivided into smaller groupings. Note that:
- You can also press the ALT key on your keyboard, and then press "T" (the underlined letter), to do the same thing.
- Especially if you are using the keyboard rather than the mouse, make sure that the FoodFocus window is "alive"- the top line "FoodFocus Version 3" will be blue if it is the active window. If it is grey, use the mouse to click on that top line. Note that whenever you switch back to the tutorial window to move along and you then want to go back to the FoodFocus window to use the keyboard, you may have to click on the FoodFocus window to tell it where you want your keyboard input to go.
Using the mouse (or the up/down keys), click (using the left mouse button) on a food grouping that has smaller groupings such as Milk, Cheese, Cream, Etc. You will get a drop down box listing food groups within that larger group.[You can also just press "C"(the underlined letter). You do not need the ALT key this time.]
Using the mouse (or the up/down and left/right arrow keys), select one of these food groups such as Milk Beverages.
Using the mouse click on Milk Beverages (or press the ENTER key) to display a list of foods in that food group. Remember that:

You can also press "B"(the underlined letter). You do not need the ALT key this time.
If the window for the list of foods gets in the way of this tutorial, you can grab that window and drag it to the side by clicking on the window title line, holding down the left mouse button and dragging the window to the side.
The bottom left corner of the window, indicates the number of foods in the list (not shown in this figure).

List of Milk Beverages

Using the mouse, click on a specific food (or use the up/down arrow keys). A food is selected when its name is highlighted in blue. Pick that food by doubleclicking on it with the left mouse button (or press the ENTER key). This will display a window in which you can specify the quantity of the food.
Enter the quantity of the food. Note that:
- The cursor (small black flashing line) indicates where numbers you enter will appear. (Use the mouse to click on another field, if you want to enter data in that field (or use the TAB key).)
- You only have to enter "1" to indicate one cup of eggnog when you use the 250 ml (1 cup) option.
You can see the nutrient data for that one food by clicking on the "Show Nutrient Data" button. Lesson 3 described how to see the overall nutrient data for all the foods you have selected. In this case, you can see data for just one specific food. See lesson 8 for more information about viewing nutrient data for one food.
You add the selected food to the food list by clicking on the "Add to Food List" button with the mouse. (Usually that button is outlined with a shadow indicating that it is the button that will be pressed when you press the ENTER key- in that case, you need only press ENTER to activate the "Add to Food List" button.)

The list of foods (lesson 1b), the summary description (lesson 1c) and the pictographs (lesson 2) update to reflect this food. In order to see the full FoodFocus screen, you may have to drag the FoodFocus window to the left.

Review Topics

How many groups of foods are used to group foods "by Type"?
Which food group has the largest number of foods?
How can you see the nutrient information for one food?
Using the keyboard only (absolutely no mouse movements or clicks), how many keystrokes are needed to chose one cup of 1% milk?
In what food group would you find moose and beaver?

Independent Practice

Select other foods using the "Food by Type" approach with only keyboard commands. When would selecting foods by type be most and least useful?

Coming Next....

Choosing foods by searching using keywords in the names of foods. For example, find Cheerios in an "oat cereal" group or find Cheerios directly.

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