Step One: Research your favorite fast food restaurant and select a meal containing a main item, a side item, a dessert and a beverage. On the restaurant's website, locate the nutritional information. Create a spreadsheet in Excel following the format below. Fill in as many gaps with nutritional information as possible.
Step Two: Use formulas to "tell" Excel how to fill in the remaing gaps.
Step Three: Add another students meal information to a seperate graph on your spreadsheet.
Step Four: Research the USDA's guidelines for nutrition.
Step Five: Write four paragraphs discussing the following: 1.) Why you chose your restaurant/meal. 2.) An evaluation of your meal. 3.) Compare your meal with the other students' meal. 4.) Compare your meal with the USDA guidelines.
| Total Calories | Fat Calories | % of Fat | Fat Grams | Non Fat Cal. | |
| Jr. Whopper | 370 | 21 | |||
| Onion Rings-sm | 310 | 17 | |||
| Med. Dr. Pepper | 280 | 0 | |||
| Hershey's Sundae Pie | 310 | 19 | |||
| Zesty Sauce | 150 | 15 | |||
| TOTAL | 1420 | 72 |
To determine Fat Calories: Each gram of fat contains 9 calories. So, you just need to tell Excel to multiply the fat grams by 9.
To determine fat grams: Since we know that each gram of fat has 9 calories attached to it, we know that if we divide fat calories by 9, we will have our fat grams!
To determine Non-Fat Calories: Calories are either fat or non-fat. So, Total calories minus ffat calories equals non-fat calories.
To determine % of fat: Divide your fat calories by the total calories.
Remember: All formulas must start with the "=" sign. Also, make sure that you are calling your cells by their correct "names"!