Food Diary Assignment

Objective: To reflect upon the foods you eat in anthropological context, develop critical thinking skills, and practice academic writing.

Assignment: You will keep a food acquisition diary for three days. You should record all foods and beverages, including vitamins and dietary supplements, for three days recording the following:

• –  Day/meal/type of food/drink/supplement, etc.
• –  How/where you acquired the food

o Did you grow the food? Buy it? Did your parents/roommates buy it? Did they get it at the grocery store? Farmers’ market? Etc.

• –  The origin of the food

o (A) Where was it grown or manufactured? This information may be found on

the food packaging itself, a fruit sticker, or may require you to look up the

food/brand online.
o (B) Where does it originate? As in, where does the food originally come

from? This will require you to investigate the geographical/regional origin of your food/ingredients as far back as you can!

After you have completed your food acquisition and sourcing diary, you will write a reflection paper based on your three-day diary that will incorporate course material (lectures and readings) and three outside sources (details below).

Assignment Details:

You may complete the three-day food acquisition and sourcing diary at any time between now and the due date of the assignment. Remember to record the days of the week and whether there are any special events happening during the recording time, as this may affect your usual diet. It is best to record food acquisition as it happens; however, this is not always practical, so you should at least record what you consumed at the end of each day. If you do not have time to record something at the time of consumption, remember to save the food packaging to help you later in the day when you record the details of the food you ate.

Hint: In the reflection think about the relative “healthiness” of the foods you ate (what informs your thoughts on the “healthiness”?). Comment on the food origins and acquisition practices.

Assignment Specifications:

Cover Page: Include course name, instructor name, name of the assignment, student name, student number, and date.

Length: MAXIMUM five pages, not including references page, appendix, or cover page.

Format: 12 pt. Time New Roman font, double spaced. Margins should be 1” on all sides. Number your pages. Doc, docx, or pdf are acceptable file formats.

ASSIGNMENT GUIDELINES: FOOD DIARY and REFLECTION ANT214 Winter 2022

Sections:

(1) Introduction and Methods – a brief explanation of how you conducted your food acquisition and sourcing diary, with consideration of some of the methodological challenges and problems associated with it (1 page).

• What steps did you take? What was easy? What was difficult?

(2) Results – a brief summary of your three-day food acquisition and sourcing records (diary) that refers to the appendix (see below) (1/2 page).

• Summarize the days without simply listing everything you ate in order. For example, “During the course of my food diary recording, I ate the same breakfast each morning (cereal with 1% milk).”
• The Results section should not include any interpretation, just a summary of the results (pretend that your reader does not have the Appendix and wants to get a sense of what you ate just from your description).

(3) Reflection on how you acquire your food, where it comes from, and the experience of keeping the diary (incorporating course content and three outside sources). (3 pages). • This assignment is in lieu of a midterm, so you need to demonstrate what you have learned so far. Think about the lecture material and the readings you have completed – what themes have come up that might relate to what you have eaten?

(4) Conclusion (1/2 page).
• The conclusion section is where you provide your reader with a summation of the

most important points of your assignment. What did you take away from the experience of the food diary? It is not sufficient to repeat what you have already said in the introduction, results, or discussion, but rather you should let the reader know what your take-away key message(s) is/are.

5. (5)  References Cited – it is not necessary to cite the lectures in the text of this assignment (the TAs and I will know when you are referring to lecture content). Include a minimum of three references, one of which must be a peer-reviewed article. Please follow the Referencing Guidelines posted on Quercus. You may use assigned course readings.
6. (6)  Appendix – include your food acquisition and sourcing diary record using the provided template. You may also include graphs or charts to present your results in the Appendix if you wish. Do not submit handwritten notes as part of this assignment.

Additional Information:

References – it is not necessary to list every single reference for the food origins you research. Many of these will come from lecture and/or outside sources. You can use some of your sources as part of your 3 outside sources that are necessary to include in your assignment. 

How many ingredients should I divide a meal into? — This will vary on a case by case basis. Let’s say you had vanilla ice cream — you should at least consider the milk and vanilla flavouring, and perhaps could push further and include sugar. If you have pepperoni pizza, you should think about the crust (wheat), cheese, pepperoni, and tomato sauce. It is not necessary to break down every meal into every single ingredient, but think about the main protein, main vegetable/fruit, main dairy ingredient, main spices etc., if you have complex or multi-ingredient meals. The more ingredients you consider and research, the more you will have to talk about in your Reflection!