I monitored my diet for 1 day. The result is unbelievable.
In short, here a run down of the food I digested: Cocoa Puff, 2% milk, canned beans, minute rice, Tropicana juice, soy sauce, smoked turkey breast, egg, white bread, marshmallow cream, peanut butter, pork chop, and Taco Times’ cinnamon crustos.
Doesn’t look too bad, right? Well, after a long day of running around jogging down the nutrition facts and the portion I ate, here are the results:
- On a 2500 calories diet
- 2985 calories intake / 2500 calories = 119.40%
- 69.5g fat / 80 = 86.88%
- 14.8g saturated fat / 25g = 59.20%
- 332mg cholesterol / 300mg = 110.67%
- 4985mg sodium / 2500mg = 199.40%
- 367g total carbohydrate / 375g = 97.87%
- 40g dietary fiber / 30g = 133.33%
- 71g sugar
As you can see, a fairly regular diet (and somewhat controlled because I changed the soy sauce to a less sodium version) still causes a skyrocketed sodium intake and an unfavored level of cholesterol. No wonder my previous blood test always shows higher blood pressure and high cholesterol: the food I eat is is high on these two items! Not to mention that 71g of sugar I don’t really need.
Let’s take a closer look at my sodium level. Essentially, the soy sauce (575mg sodium per tbsp) pushed that level way above the acceptable level. But even without soy sauce, my calculation shows that the sodium I consumed from other food is already over that 2500mg level. Not good.
What about my cholesterol? A huge amount of it is from the egg, I realized. An egg would give you roughly 215mg of cholesterol, and that is 71% of the total cholesterol you are suppose to digest per day. But you say egg is a good source of protein? Well, the same egg I ate, as the label says, has 6g of protein, 10% of your total protein intake for the day. From what I can tell, egg contributes to cholesterol level more than it does to protein level!
This is somewhat a wake up call, and it looks like I’ll really have to pay attention to my diet now.
