You are what you eat, and a healthy diet is key to maintaining good health and reducing your risks for diseases, like heart disease, diabetes and even certain cancers, according to HealthierUS.gov. Knowing exactly what you eat, how it affects your body and what you need to do to make healthy changes is done through various assessment processes. These assessments can be used by anyone who wishes to change their diet, lose weight or become healthier by eating better.
Risk Assessment
Before altering your diet or embarking on a new diet program, assessing both your current dietary needs and health risks are important, according to the University of Texas System's Wellness Program Services. A health risk assessment, or HRA, is commonly used to get an overview of your health and diet strengths and weaknesses. These assessments typically consist of questionnaire that asks about your diet, exercise regimen, family health history and other diet and health factors you might have. Once this risk assessment is completed, the information gathered is used to develop a diet regimen tailored to your particular needs.
Intake Assessment
Apart from an HRA, each diet plan can be accompanied by a detailed intake assessment, or a record of the kind and amount of food you eat, according to the Vanderbilt Center for Human Nutrition. Six common methods are used in intake assessments; 24-hour dietary recalls, food diaries, diet histories, food frequency questionnaires, observed intakes and weighed intakes. The most accurate of these, weighed intakes, measure all the foods and fluids a person ingests. The person weighs all the food served to them before and after eating, subtracting the amount after from the amount before to arrive at the total weight of the food item ingested.
Effectiveness Assessment
Apart from evaluating your dietary needs, there is the assessment of how well your diet is or isn't working. For dieters interested in weight loss, one of the most common effectiveness assessment tools is the body mass index, or BMI, according to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention. BMI measures your fatness and can be used before, during and after a diet to measure the effects the diet had on your body fat content. Other assessment tools are far more specific, such as the blood tests that are required for diets designed to reduce cholesterol or sodium.
References
- Columbia University: College of Physicians and Surgeons: Assessment Tools for Weight and Health Related Risk
- University of Texas System's Wellness Program Services: Assess & Manage My Health
- Vanderbilt Center for Human Nutrition: Diet and Nutrition Assessment Center
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Body Mass Index
- HealthierUS.gov: Nutrition
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