Community Nutrition

COMMUNITY NUTRITION 3 (1+2)

Lesson 6 : Diet Survey

Institutional level

To assess the food intake at institutional level, there are two methods.

• Inventory Method: (Food list Method): This method is often employed in institutions like hostels, army barracks, homes for the aged etc, where homogenous group of people take their meals from a common kitchen.
  
  In this method, the quantity of food stuff issued to the kitchen as per the records maintained by the warden, are taken in to account for computation of consumption and there is no direct measurement.
  
  

  The average intake per person per day is calculated as follows

  
  It is ideal to conduct the survey for 7 consecutive days to know the true picture of diet. This method though takes less time, not very accurate, compared to actual weighment method.
  


• Actual weighment method: In this method the total raw foods for cooking are weighed taking in to consideration wastage of food. This procedure is repeated for at least seven days. To assess the intake per person per day, the following formula is used.
  
  

  Intake in terms of raw food per person per day =