Did you know that SuperTracker was discontinued on June 30 3018? SuperTracker was a great food pattern analysis tool that allowed users to enter the foods they consumed, and it displayed how those foods fit into a pattern of various food groups. Food Pattern analysis is a great way to show where your diet needed improvement and what your clients or students were doing well. Food patterns have groups like Grains, Vegetables, Fruit, Dairy, and Protein (meat and plant based), etc. Food Pattern Eating is a great way to teach an individual how to get a variety of food groups and that each food group is important for different reasons, to create a well balanced diet. Although this tool is no longer supported and has been discontinued, the concept of food pattern teaching is here to stay. As part of the nutrition industry, we understand the need to teach the importance of how each group plays a part in a healthy diet. Other tools may be able to help with this model of education.
Even though the SuperTracker tool is no longer available, we do still have access to the choosemyplate.gov website, where it offers various educational handouts to help with certain demographics. If you are teaching at a primary or secondary school you can use some of the quizzes, and educational handouts to teach the students how to eat a well-balanced diet. For the high-level advanced university students, if the information on choosemyplage.gov is too basic then off course, you have the options to use different software applications to learn more about MyPlate patterns and creating a well-balanced diet. For example, in our application Nutritionist Pro™ Diet Analysis application you have the option to assign your own patterns to groups of foods, which is a great way to learn what is in your food and how it applies to the MyPlate pattern. In our recipe or food creation section as you are making your food item, you will need to look at the food or recipe and assign food patterns to them. Once you do that you can then use this food and its pattern data in a diet and see how your whole day or week will look. Let’s take one example – let’s say you are making a blueberry muffin but your blueberry muffin is a modified healthy recipe so instead of a lot of sugar perhaps you use a small amount and add other sweeteners or applesauce to the recipe. Perhaps you also use fresh blueberries and other berries in your mix as well. Since you know the ingredients and their amounts that is part of your final recipe you can add data for each food group. For example, maybe your muffin has about ¼ cup of fruit and only a few servings of empty calories or sugar, you can add this type of data to your blueberry muffin. After the food is saved to the database you can then use this food in a diet and if you consume 3 of these muffins in a week, it will calculate the data and display it in a report for you based on your consumption.
As nutrition professionals and part of the nutrition industry it was very sad for us to see this tool discontinued that has helped more than 27 million users worldwide. As part of the industry we will continue to use MyPlate patterns and teach the benefits of eating a variety of foods to create a well-balanced meal.
If you have any questions or comments please reach out to our team.