Please comment on your final thoughts on what you have learned in the course regarding diet and nutrition(250 words ) 

Then respond to the two students below 

Khari :

This semester in Nutrition I feel that I have learn so much regarding personal food intake guidelines, vitamins and nutrients needed for survival, as well as what happens if people do not get the nutrients they need. My perspective on food has changed dramatically and I’m realizing that it is so much better to eat for nutrients instead of flavor and convenience. I really enjoyed the Diet Analysis Project because it allowed me to take into account what I’ve actually been eating on a regular basis and how that’s not good enough for optimal health. It highlighted all of the nutrients I am deficient in and some that may be toxic. The Cronometer is something that I will definitely be taking with me outside of this class. Another topic I learned about was how malnutrition particularly affects infants, pregnant mothers, and unborn babies. I knew how important nutrition was during pregnancy but this class really broke down why each vitamin and nutrient was vital to a well rounded diet and also how each one has a different function and affects a different system of the body. (for example how the lack of vitamin A is directly related to blindness.) I also thought it was interesting to learn how malnutrition can drastically affect the health and wellness of children, adults, and the elderly. Main takeaways I have from this class are to drastically improve my diet to live better, to help my friends and family to improve their diets, and to honestly donate food and help out in my community when I can for the betterment of society and everyone’s health. Thanks for the great semester! I wish everyone best of luck from here on forward, Go Bears!!

 Keli :

I feel like this course has had a huge impact in the way that I view food and nutrition. Coming into the course I feel like I had a decent grasp on what types of food I should be eating, but I did not know the true reasons as to why. This course did a great job of breaking down all of the nutrients and explaining what our body uses all of them for. This course also taught me that some foods may seem “healthier” than others but in reality there are other foods packed with so many more nutrients. This point was really brought home with the chronometer project. During this project, every time I went to input something that I ate, I was shocked at how much or how little nutritional value it had. This project taught me a lot about how I have been fueling my body. And more importantly, it taught me areas in which I can revise my diet in order to get nutrients I may have been missing out on previously. The “almost impossible fast food challenge” that we did was also really eye opening. I feel like I already knew that fast food was an easy option and not a good option, but I don’t think I truly understood just how hard it was to fill your daily nutritional needs with fast food. It was really hard to reach certain values but seemed real easy to go over others. There are a lot of food choices where we can get the nutrients that we need but fast food is definitely not the best source.