The researcher can enter meal codes from 1 to 999. A typical way of using these codes is to set 1 to 9 as the first digit, 0 to 9 as the second digit and 0 to 9 as the third digit. For instance this could make 100 breakfast, 110 breakfast away, 111 breakfast at MacDonalds, etc… of course, any scheme is possible using these 3 digits.
The researcher can enter this data in a table of meal codes which are used to prompt data entry personnel and provide output in validation reports. This table is subject file specific. A meals table can thus be specific to each study.
Meal codes and descriptions appear in all meal detail reports. Meal codes are included in export files and can thus be used in spreadsheets and statistical packages.