I am an analytical person, and feel very comfortable translating daily serving sizes into understandable measures, determining just how much of any given mineral I am getting in a supplement, and interpreting the chemical-babble often found on processed foods these days. So, it was a bit of a humbling experience to find that I was not guaranteed an A on the assignment, and even worse, that although I thought I had all the answers, I was really short on solutions. My primary error was to think that knowledge about food was equivalent to eating well. Once I began the assignment in earnest, I realized that I really had not been using what I knew to benefit my health. Over the past few weeks, I have made a sincere, though not 100% successful effort to apply what I learned when creating my Healthy Eating Plan, and have summarized the results below. In terms of general eating habits, I have often jokingly described myself as person who does not real eat a lot of meat. As detailed in my Healthy Eating Plan, I relied on dairy as a primary protein source, particularly hard cheeses, as many yogurts, for instance, are actually not vegetarian. One notable conclusion I reached from the assignment was that I was really over emphasizing dairy to fill my protein needs. I was already having a sufficient, healthy intake of other protein substitutes for meat, such as Garden burgers and soy proteins like Yves vegetarian cold cuts. Another concern was that because of food choices such as high salt dairy products and the frequent use of condiments, including prepackaged salad dressings and pasta sauces, my blood pressure might be borderline problematic. A final opportunity area I discovered actually didn’t have to do with what I was eating, but when and how. I had suspected a problem, but not really given serious thought to the worrisome fact that I tended to eat a lot alone,