http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-pyramid20.html Critics see new food pyramid as abstract art file:home3 April 20, 2005 BY JIM RITTER Health Reporter Advertisement The familiar food pyramid is getting a makeover, but some consumers might find the new design as confusing as the old one. MyPyramid, unveiled Tuesday, looks like a rainbow, with brightly colored bands running vertically from the tip to the _base_. Each color represents a different food group. The widest band, orange, stands for grains, which consumers are supposed to eat in relative abundance. The next widest bands are green and blue, representing vegetables and milk products, followed in order by fruits (red) and meat and beans (purple). The narrowest band, yellow, represents oils, which consumers are supposed to eat sparingly. The bands are widest at the bottom, symbolizing nutritious foods with little or no solid fats or added sugars. These foods should be selected more often, the U.S. Agriculture Department said. On the left side, a stylized stick figure representing physical activity climbs up pyramid steps. It's also on the web If you want detailed dietary advice, skip the new food pyramid graphic and log on to the government's consumer-friendly Web site,
www.MyPyramid.gov. The site enables you to determine how much of each food group you should eat, _base_d on your age, sex and activity level. For example, an active 40-year-old woman should eat about 2,200 calories per day, including 2 cups of fruits, 3 cups of vegetables, 7 ounces of grains (equivalent to seven bread slices), 6 ounces of meat and beans, three cups of fat-free or low-fat milk or equivalent milk products, 6 teaspoons of oils and 290 calories of discretionary foods that are fat-free or low-fat and contain no added sugars. The Web site was inundated Tuesday with as many as 1,500 hits per second, and some Web pages were frozen. But the number of visitors is expected to decline in coming days, making the site more accessible, a USDA spokesman said. Food pyramid gets a new look The Department of Agriculture unveiled a new version of the food guide pyramid on Tuesday, adding a colorful reminder to make healthy food choices and increase physical activity. Anatomy of the pyramid Figure represents the importance of daily physical activity. Commercial motive hinted At first glance, consumers might find the USDA's graphic puzzling, since there's no explanatory text or pictures, said Sonja Tuitele of Wild Oats Markets, a chain of natural food supermarkets. It's going to be very confusing, Tuitele said. The pyramid and shape will be tough for people to understand, at least initially. The food pyramid symbolizes the government's comprehensive new dietary guidelines, which were released in January and include 23 recommendations. The USDA figured it would be too complicated to include all that advice in a graphic, so it adopted a simplified version that has only five words of text: Steps to a Healthier You. But Penn State University nutritionist Barbara Rolls said a graphic that contains no specific information is definitely not very helpful. And Margo Wootan of the consumer group Center for Science in the Public Interest added: USDA seems to have bent over backward to avoid upsetting any particular commodity group or food company by not showing any foods that Americans should eat less of. Other experts, however, praised the simple design. It doesn't try to jam everything into a graphic that people don't understand, said registered dietitian Dawn Jackson Blatner of Northwestern Memorial Hospital's Wellness Institute. And many food companies are embracing MyPyramid. For example, General Foods said it will put the graphic on 100 million boxes of Big G cereal brands. The old food pyramid, introduced in 1992, included the recommended number of daily servings for each food group. Eighty percent of Americans recognized the old pyramid, but critics said the design was outdated and confusing, and didn't relate to varying activity levels. The government said it tested several designs, including pyramids and other shapes. A poster-size version of MyPyramid contains detailed information. Critics have raised questions about Porter Novelli, the firm that helped create MyPyramid. Porter Novelli has food companies as clients, but both the firm and the government said the MyPyramid work was handled separately, so there was no conflict.
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