Dietary balance chart for an on-line computerized graphical support system in MHTS

Dietary habits are believed to play an important role in the etiology of adult disease. For this reason, it is necessary to include effective dietary guidance in multiphasic health testing and services (MHTS) programmes for primary disease prevention. We have developed such a programme of simple dietary advice, using a computer system for the MHTS. Examinees' dietary habits are checked using optical character record (OCR) questionnaire forms, and the results are displayed on the screen of a colour display terminal. They are required to prepare a menu of their usual daily dietary intake in terms of quantity and type of food. Thus the data collected relate to the nutritional composition of the examinee's usual diet. Nutritional requirements of the Japanese according to sex, height, and level of physical activity, in accordance with criteria set by the Japanese Ministry of Health and Welfare, are fed into the computer in advance. For each examinee, these criteria and the results of the assessment of the diet are displayed together on the screen in the form of colour graphs for comparison.