Nagoya City Science Museum

Purpose of Exhibition

This exhibit is designed to offer you a computer-based diet checkup tailored to your personal needs (with three computers in a standby position)._You will be informed of what an unbalanced diet will cause you, what function each nutrient performs and what effect the interaction among the nutrients has on each nutrient's function. It is hoped that this checkup will prompt you to stop and think more carefully about your eating habit.

Additional Knowledge

Nutrition and Nutrients
In general, people tend to confuse nutrition and nutrients. "Nutrition" is defined as the very phenomenon of converting consumed substances in the body for vital activity. "Nutrients" are substances contained in foods consumed for nutrition.
Basic Knowledge about Nutrients
Placed on the walls near the computers are the descriptions of basic knowledge about nutrients. (Five major nutrients and water and six basic food groups are shown for your selection according to age and physical condition.). Select what you need based on the information provided.

Nutritional Requirements
The amounts of the nutrients that a person needs daily are called "nutritional requirements, which vary from person to person. The exhibits introduce you to ten major nutrients. But keep in mind that there are many other nutrients that the human body requires.On the computers, you need to type in (1) gender, (2) age, (3) exercise or not (degree of physical activity in your everyday life). Generally, (1) men, (2) growing kids (3) strenuous exercisers require more nutrients. Females (at ages 15 to 49) need to type in whether pregnant or breast-feeding or not. Females in pregnancy and breast-feeding require more nutrients for the health of their embryos or fetuses and their own placentas and for the growth of their babies and their own recoveries respectively.Nowadays, the Japanese diet tends to be deficient in iron and calcium and excessive in sodium.

Diet Checkup
Created around the three computers are three kinds of settings --- home, school and restaurant --- respectively. Typical menu models are displayed in these settings. (Displayed in the school setting are a real-life lunch menu each of an elementary school and a junior high school in Nagoya.)Select a total of eight meals for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack for two days from among the menus (about 200) displayed on the computer monitor screens. With regard to school students, they have school-provided lunches and there are about 30 school lunch menus each for elementary school students and junior high school students. In conclusion, you will be informed about whether your diet is well balanced or not in terms of nutrition. Watch out. For the twilight time you are hungry, you will also hear voices of temptation (five kinds of voices per age group) including "Would you like to eat XX?" It depends on you whether or not your diet is well balanced in nutrition.If, after your diet checkup, you press on the buttons indicating the names of the nutrients, you will find on the computer monitor screen the description of what function each nutrient performs and what effect the interaction among the nutrients has on each nutrient's function as well as a recommendation on how to ingest the nutrients according to age or physical condition.

Basic Food Groups
If you categorize foods into some groups according to nutritional functions and consume foods from all those groups, your diet will be well balanced in nutrition. To categorize foods, there are some ways, each of which has advantages and drawbacks. On exhibit are the 6-group categorization called "6 basic food groups" and 3-group categorization called "3 basic food groups."

Picky Eating
On exhibit in front are the twelve doors indicating the food pictures. When you open them, you will find some information on picky eating --- in other words, what group of food(s) picky eaters need to cut down and what group of food(s) they need to consume more and their effects on your health.Keeping on eating the same food for a long time, whether it is seemingly healthful or not, causes an unbalanced ingestion of nutrients and it also adversely affects the functions of the other nutrients properly ingested in terms of amount. Therefore, the bottom line is that it is vital for you to eat a variety of foods cooked and prepared in different ways.

Article by Tomoko Horiuchi, curator