Selling Myself Short

I have been making a great effort to track nutrition on CRON-o-Meter. While I have established a good daily eating pattern this is a great way of showing up the potential gaps and making adjustments. I was alarmed recently to see that I wasn’t making my targets on potassium and zinc. It’s not a question of adding in one food to redress the balance, I think that the main way I will make those targets is eating a wide range of items all of which do provide those nutrients. One problem I have is that many of the products already on CRON-o-Meter are American, while the British ones I use are not there, and the nutritional analysis provided by the manufacturer only tends to give calories, protein, fat, carbs, fibre, salt and a very few of the major vitamins and minerals. One such item is fat-free yogurt which I make with an Easiyo mix, adding a little skim milk powder to increase protein and calcium. Originally, I entered the new foods onto CRON-o-Meter using the analysis on the pack, but have realised that by doing so I am omitting to include a lot of the trace nutrients which are undoubtedly there. And those little traces add up. So my total at the end of the day is inaccurate. I suppose what I ought to do is write a letter to all the manufacturers involved asking for a more detailed nutritional analysis (and then wait for ever for a reply) but what I have been doing in the meantime is revisiting my entries on CRON-o-Meter and seeing where the gaps are. The best way I have found is to look for something already on CRON-o-Meter which is very similar to what I am using and then adjust and re-name it. It won’t be perfect but even if the traces of zinc for example are not exactly right at least they will be there and not entirely absent! When I did this I found that my daily results were far better than I had feared, indeed I had made my targets of zinc, and only fell short of potassium a little. I need more greens and pulses, obviously. I like greens and pulses, in fact there are many delicious Indian soups and side dishes with those very ingredients, but if I produce any more gas I will probably go into orbit.