You will need to meet with someone whose ethnic or cultural background is different from yours and share with that person what a "typical" meal is in his/her culture. You will then do a computerized nutritional analysis of this typical meal, and a second nutritional analysis of a typical meal that you eat. If you can not locate an individual whose culture is different from yours, an alternative can be to evaluate a meal from an ethnic (not fast food) restaurant. If even this is impossible, evaluating meals from ethnic cookbooks can be substituted with permission from the instructor.

You will submit a narrative report on how the different ethnic/cultural meal compares nutritionally to a typical meal that you eat, along with computer Diet Analysis summary sheets for each of the meals. In your report you should identify the nutritional strengths and weaknesses of the ethnic meal relative to your typical diet, and make suggestions for improving the meal. Do not forget to include what your typical meal consists of in this comparison. If the two meals differ significantly in calories, you should make adjustments in your analysis for nutrient density relative to the calorie content of the two meals. You will also submit the computer Diet Analysis summary sheet of the typical meals.

Some sample reports are available on the Sample Student Papers page for you to get an idea of what students have done in the past.

This page most recently modified on 9/6/04.