Finding foods made easy

MRC's Chronic Diseases of Lifestyle Research Unit have come up with a winner - a tool to help dieticians and nutritionists during research and education work

Just exactly how large is a big apple? Or how much is a tiny helping of rice? The dilemma of portion size is one dieticians and nutritionists always encounter when doing food intake assessments or educating people about the right diet.

Two MRC researchers have come up with a very practical solution. The Dietary Assessment and Education Kit (DAEK) is the brainchild of Drs Nelia Steyn and Marjanne Senekal, each with more than 25 years' experience in nutrition research and education.

Drs Nelia Steyn (right) and Marjanne Senekal with their colourful nutrition kit, which promises to do away with the headaches dieticians and nutritionists face on a daily basis.

The kit comprises a food photo manual with more than four hundred colour photographs (on A4 cards) of foods commonly consumed by South Africans, plus fifteen cards containing life-size drawings of portion sizes. "With this, people can not only indicate what they have eaten, but also how much. It's very valuable when doing a dietary assessment - much more accurate than using terms such as ‘ big' or ‘ small'," Dr Steyn explains.

These cards are used to help people remember what foods they've eaten over a certain period.

The other component is a set of 214 flash cards of commonly-consumed foods and drinks. "This is intended for food frequency interviews and is ideal for use with illiterate persons. The participant is asked to sort the cards into food eaten and not eaten over the required period. After this, the dietician can proceed with the portion size questions," Dr Steyn says. In addition, the kit also contains a training manual for field workers when they have to do dietary assessments of population groups.

The kit is also a valuable educational tool. "A dietician will now better be able to guide a person when having to explain the right diet for patients having to adapt to diabetes, for example. The dietician can not only show them what to eat, but exactly how much," she says.

For research purposes, the kit is used in conjunction with the FoodFinder software program that was developed by the MRC's Nutritional Intervention Research Unit.