Hatrack River Forum: New Food Guide Pyramid

This is topic New Food Guide Pyramid in forum Books, Films, Food and Culture at Hatrack River Forum.

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Posted by CRash (Member # 7754) on :

http://www.mypyramid.gov/

We should all eat more orange! And I need to cut back a bit on my purple. [Smile]

The new official USDA Food Guide Pyramid is a pretty-colored "adaptable" diagram that uses colors to represent food groups and approximate slices of a triangle to represent the amount that should be eaten. (Plus the torso-less person walking up the stairs on the side to represent the need for exercise.)

Positives: Works for the illiterate, because there are no labels to speak of. Also can be customized for personal use.

Negatives: No one knows the difference between blue and red unless they bother to look it up. And many people, after making a customized recommendation, don't know exactly how many bowls of Wheaties 6 ounces of grains is.

I wonder how the health and fitness instructors are supposed to test kids on this in their classrooms? It was so much easier when you knew that it was 2-4 servings of Fruits and 3-5 of Vegetables. Now Tommy needs 1.5 cups of Fruits, while Sally needs 2, and Billy is completely perplexed as how to fit a carrot stick into a cup in the first place. [Confused]

Posted by Nato (Member # 1448) on :

Remember...

Make half your grains whole.

Posted by Book (Member # 5500) on :

I see they've taken a hint from the Terror Alert system.

Looking at the pyramid does give me a strange hunger for popsicles or freezie-pops, though.

Posted by ricree101 (Member # 7749) on :

Three cheers for design by committee. Another amazing piece of work from the US government.

Posted by Kayla (Member # 2403) on :

Do they make half grains?

If you eat whole grains, do you have to eat half as many?

Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :

And yet they still don't address the needs of nursing mothers. *sigh*

Posted by Tstorm (Member # 1871) on :

I will cast my vote for "stupid" regarding this redesign. Why not just reuse the pyramid and switch the groups where necessary? Oh well, I can't even remember what the last pyramid recommended for servings of each food group. I just try to balance everything out.