| Grains | Vegetables | Fruits | Oils | Milk | Meat + Beans |
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Food Pyramid Upheaval Aims To Customize Diets
By Aleta Watson
Mercury News
The national symbol of healthy eating patterns leaped into the information age Tuesday when the U.S. Department of Agriculture unveiled a new food pyramid and Web-based eating guide designed to give personalized diet and exercise advice to Americans for the first time.
With a couple of clicks at www.mypyramid.gov, anyone now can determine what to eat for optimal health - based on 12 separate pyramid plans... But the guidelines go beyond calories to suggest specific amounts of each type of food.
More motivated consumers can even track their food intake and exercise patterns to see how they stack up against the government recommendations.
...
MyPyramid, which includes a figure climbing steps to represent a new emphasis on exercise, replaces the icon that has been printed on bread bags and cereal boxes for more than a decade. It's part of a government campaign to combat the rising tide of obesity among Americans.
"If we don't change those trends, our children may be the first generation that cannot look forward to a longer life span than their parents - something that should be very troubling to us all," Agriculture Undersecretary Eric Bost said at press conference and on conference call to unveil the new pyramid in Washington, D.C.
At the heart of the new guidance system is the 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which was released in January. MyPyramid outlines in more detail just what each person should eat, based on age, gender, and activity level.
...
Speculation had swirled for months around what the revised icon would look like, and many people had predicted the USDA would come up with a totally different image around which to build its public education campaigns.
The new icon keeps the shape but aligns the food groups vertically, in contrast to the old pyramid, which stacked the food groups horizontally from top to bottom according to how much people should eat from each one. Now each group is represented by a brightly colored stripe that stretches from the base of the pyramid to its tip. The width of the stripe indicates its proportional role in the ideal diet. For example, the orange stripe for grains appears to be nearly three times as wide as the purple stripe for meat, beans, and other protein.
Margo G. Wootan, nutrition policy director for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, criticized the whole system for being much too complicated to reach the people who need to overhaul their diets
...
But King, chairwoman of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, was pleased with how closely the new icon and its Web site refelcted her panel's recommendations.
...
The new system hopes to change behavior by giving consumers personalized planning tools.
...
Marjorie Freedman, a nutritionist and parent working to improve food in San Jose schools, is not sure how well it will work.
...
By Aleta Watson
Mercury News
The national symbol of healthy eating patterns leaped into the information age Tuesday when the U.S. Department of Agriculture unveiled a new food pyramid and Web-based eating guide designed to give personalized diet and exercise advice to Americans for the first time.
With a couple of clicks at www.mypyramid.gov, anyone now can determine what to eat for optimal health - based on 12 separate pyramid plans... But the guidelines go beyond calories to suggest specific amounts of each type of food.
More motivated consumers can even track their food intake and exercise patterns to see how they stack up against the government recommendations.
...
MyPyramid, which includes a figure climbing steps to represent a new emphasis on exercise, replaces the icon that has been printed on bread bags and cereal boxes for more than a decade. It's part of a government campaign to combat the rising tide of obesity among Americans.
"If we don't change those trends, our children may be the first generation that cannot look forward to a longer life span than their parents - something that should be very troubling to us all," Agriculture Undersecretary Eric Bost said at press conference and on conference call to unveil the new pyramid in Washington, D.C.
At the heart of the new guidance system is the 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which was released in January. MyPyramid outlines in more detail just what each person should eat, based on age, gender, and activity level.
...
Speculation had swirled for months around what the revised icon would look like, and many people had predicted the USDA would come up with a totally different image around which to build its public education campaigns.
The new icon keeps the shape but aligns the food groups vertically, in contrast to the old pyramid, which stacked the food groups horizontally from top to bottom according to how much people should eat from each one. Now each group is represented by a brightly colored stripe that stretches from the base of the pyramid to its tip. The width of the stripe indicates its proportional role in the ideal diet. For example, the orange stripe for grains appears to be nearly three times as wide as the purple stripe for meat, beans, and other protein.
Margo G. Wootan, nutrition policy director for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, criticized the whole system for being much too complicated to reach the people who need to overhaul their diets
...
But King, chairwoman of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, was pleased with how closely the new icon and its Web site refelcted her panel's recommendations.
...
The new system hopes to change behavior by giving consumers personalized planning tools.
...
Marjorie Freedman, a nutritionist and parent working to improve food in San Jose schools, is not sure how well it will work.
...
I really like the new pyramid, personally. It has that little person doing exercise, and I really like how the food groups are vertically done, instead of stacked horizontally. It seems a lot easier to guess how much of each type of food you should eat compared to the others.
The website, and the personalized touch, was what was really interesting to me. If people are really motivated to losing weight, I think that this pyramid, the tracker, and the online features would not only work, but would help a lot more.
Me, I was always confused about the servings, but now they actually give you real amounts of food - 3-4 slices of bread, or 4 cups of milk, for an example. It's just a lot easier to identify with slices and cups and ounces than it is to identify with servings.
Share your thoughts. Do you think it will work? A waste of time? Did you like the old pyramid better? Etc. Etc... Go check out the website. It's interesting. Oo;
By the way, the article was found in the San Jose Mercury News newspaper, today's edition [April 20, 2005]. It's on a small section on the front page, on page 3A, and on page 4A. Ellipses indicate when I skipped portions of the article. Any mistakes in the article are probably my own errors made when typing it up.
