Q2 Food Benchmark

Ingredients 

2 cups of whole grain pasta

1 cup of mayo

1/2 cup of mustard

4 sticks of celery

1 onion

1 teaspoon of season salt 

1 teaspoon of black pepper 

1 can of tuna in water 

Instructions 

1. Boil pasta 

2. chop up celery and onion 

3. open and drain can of tuna 

4. mix all ingredients together

Mayo has a very high fat content so you are supposed to use it in moderation. 1 cup of mayo have 916 calories, 78.49 grams of fat, 56.16 grams of carbs and 2.12 grams of protein. I used a higher ratio of pasta to mayo so that it only lightly coated the pasta. Dijon mustard has 198 calories per cup and I only used a half of a cup of dijon mustard so its 99 calories. In a teaspoon of dijon mustard there is 4 calories, 0.19 grams of fat, 0.47 grams of carbs and 0.24 grams of protein. There is 0.17 grams of sugar in dijon mustard and as opposed to yellow mustard it is less in sugar. I used one whole onion and that had 67 calories, 0.13 grams of fat, 16.18 grams of carbs, 1.47 grams of protein. For one stalk of celery it is 6 calories I used 4 so that is 42 calories, 0.28 grams of fat, 4.76 grams of carbs, and 1.12 grams of protein. I used whole grain penne pasta and there was 1600 calories which is a huge amount, pasta is a starch so it has to be eaten in moderation. There were 12 grams of fat, 328 grams of carbs and 56 grams of protein. Pasta has a lot of carbs to it so when you start adding a bunch of other ingredients it lessens the nutritional value. The seasons that I used do not have any calories. The tuna that I used was 220 calories, 5.11 grams of fat, 0 grams of carbs and 40.63 grams of protein. I decided to use tuna because I knew that it was high in protein. 

I decided to make this dish because I knew that because I wanted to make pasta an that I shouldn't use to many other ingredients. Also the ingredients that I used I did not use much of so that there was less amount of calories. Altogether my dish has 3,043 calories and there was at least 6-8 servings so that is  about 380 calories per serving which is not bad at all. My dish also had a low cost it was around $8 the most expensive item was the whole grain pasta. 

Reflection

Overall I enjoyed this unit, a lot of the material that we covered I was some what familiar with. My mom is pre-diabetic and it runs in the family. So two years ago she changed the whole houses eating habitats. All of our breads  are whole grain, so is the pasta, we only eat brown rice and there is often not many baked good in the house unless they are homemade. There are so many items that are healthier but you find that they tend to cost more. During this unit when talking about nutrition I think we also needed to talk more about the price of the food. Many times people shop for quantity not quality, many people in america can not afford quality though. We need to form a better food system then we will see a decrease in obesity, heart conditions and diabetes.