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 still have access to choosemyplate.gov, which 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 high-level university students, if the information on choosemyplate.gov is too basic, you can use different software applications to learn more about MyPlate patterns and create a well-balanced diet. For example, in our Nutritionist Pro™ Diet Analysis application, you can 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 it. 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. Since you know the ingredients and their amounts in 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 three 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, which 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.