Do You Know What You Ate Today?: Keeping A Food Log

Monday November 5, 2007

If you're trying to pinpoint which foods are causing symptoms of food allergies, intolerances, or sensitivities, or if you'd like to keep track of which foods you've introduced to a baby in an allergic family, a food log is a great way to do so. You'll find online food logging tools in abundance, but many are geared towards losing weight or balancing your diet for athletic training. What you're looking for when you're concerned about food allergies and sensitivities is simple: what did you eat, when did you eat it, and did you have any worrisome symptoms afterwards?

There are numerous viable ways to keep a food log. The most important are that it's easy for your physician to interpret and that it's both large enough for you to write down a complete list of the foods you ate and any symptoms you experienced and compact enough for you to keep it with you whenever you're around food. A food log isn't a substitute for your doctor's advice, but rather a supplement --- a way for your doctor to determine how your symptoms correlate with your diet and what, if any, connection there is between the two.

Here's one system I've used successfully for physician-ordered food logs. It will work on either a PDA or on paper and requires no preplanning whatsoever (although you can pre-write your pages if you have regular mealtimes, if you desire).