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April 19, 2005
As If Healthy Eating Wasn’t Hard Enough…
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The government on Tuesday discarded its one-size-fits-all food pyramid in favor of 12 different triangle-shaped guides, each geared to people's differing lifestyles and nutritional needs. Inside the familiar pyramid shape, rainbow-colored bands representing different food groups run vertically from the tip to the base. The old pyramid's sections ran horizontally. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns called it "a system of information to help consumers understand how to put nutrition recommendations into action."
When I first read this, my impression was that they were going to have several pyramids based on what kind of a diet you want to follow (low carb, low fat, etc.) Apparently, though, the pyramids all follow the same basic structure, but are different according to age, gender, lifestyle etc. So instead of telling you that you need 6-11 servings of breads, it will tell you that you need exactly 7 servings. Apparently that range thing was a little too complicated for some people. I’m not hopeful that this will fix that problem though, the whole thing looks horribly complicated to me and it’s no longer one single image. The simple pyramid was something people could stick in their head and use to always remember the general gist of things. Now there’s a useless symbol and a webpage where you can go to get everything customized for you. Obese people either won’t be bothering to check a government webpage to see what they should be eating, or they will have already tried so many things that one more addition to the pile of advice isn’t going to make that much of a difference.
You can look at it at mypyramid.gov. (The website must be bogged down today, because I can’t get much of anything.)
People have steadily grown fatter since the food pyramid debuted in 1992. A report last month in The New England Journal of Medicine contended that obesity, particularly in children, was causing a reversal in life expectancy, shaving four to nine months off the average life span. Johanns said the 1992 pyramid had "become quite familiar, but few Americans follow the recommendations." He said that knowledge about nutrition and food consumption patterns has grown significantly in the past dozen years and is reflected in the new food guidance symbols.
Sounds like the old pyramid wasn’t doing much of anything either, I doubt complicating things will help. Anyone who wants dietary complications can buy a 200 page diet book.
Posted by illuminaria at April 19, 2005 03:15 PM