How to Determine NSI

As you age, your nutrition becomes increasingly important. Your body becomes less efficient at breaking down junk and creating new energy, so you have to be careful about what you eat and how you exercise if you want to stay healthy. The Nutrition Screening Initiative, or NSI, is a simple system developed to help elderly individuals determine their overall health level. You can figure out where you rank on the NSI by completing a simple checklist. Once you know where you stand, you can make the appropriate adjustments to diet and lifestyle.

Instructions

• 1

  Visit the National Resource Center on Nutrition and Aging at nutritionandaging.fiu.edu.

• 2

  Point your browser to the National Resource Center on Nutrition and Aging's "Nutritional Health" survey.

• 3

  Read each statement. When you answer "Yes" to a statement, write the numeric value down on a piece of paper. For example, answering "Yes" to "I eat fewer than two meals per day" adds three points to your score.

• 4

  Tally up your score after completing the survey. Simply add all of the numbers together to find your total score.

• 5

  Cross check your score with the values provided by the survey. Depending on your answers, you will land at good health, moderate nutritional risk, or high nutritional risk.