On the 7th of April 2022, UP’s Prof. MacIntyre along with Mrs Beeforth from the Department of Human Nutrition held a diet and health training session at the Melusi Clinic in Pretoria West.

She highlighted the importance of understanding portion sizes for both babies, toddlers, children and adults when community health workers do house calls. The training included a 24hour re-call sheet questionnaire, which is used to identify the types of food and portion sizes eaten by children and adults. Each patient and child will receive a total of three interviews spread out on different days,  this is done to find out what different meals they consume on a day to day basis. Children receive a questionnaire to find out more about the child, with the consent of the parents, and child's food record is then created, here the parent must write down what the child ate from the time they woke up. The record is used as a starting point to assist the interviewer in better understanding what the child’s diet looks like before going into further detail. During the training, visual cards were used as an aid to identify how much the child eats and to better understand their portion size.

A 24-hour recall for the day before is a voluntary programme in which the parent can fill in details of what the child ate, without the interviewer being present.

Click here for more info on the Department of Human Nutrition