Critics see new food pyramid as abstract art
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Critics see new food pyramid as abstract art
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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, based 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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