The diet order census is the number of diet orders (i.e., diet type and texture type combinations) the dining areas support and is used in forecasting calculations and production reports so that production staff know the servings of each menu item to produce.
The diet order census is built by diet order assignments to people (who in turn are assigned to dining areas). For example, you have 20 people with the house diet type/regular texture type, three people with the vegetarian diet type/regular texture type, and two people with the house diet type/mechanical soft texture type.
In addition, the diet order census can consist of a dining area set up with a manual diet order census.