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The New Food Pyramid

Unfortunately, it is not getting good reviews. The old food pyramid had great troubles. It is unfortunate they are not using Walter Willett's pyramid. Here's a bit of one commentary on it, with links to the old and new pyramids.

Four Servings of Design Improving on the new food pyramid. By Jessie Scanlon

If the USDA's recommended diet helps people live long and prosper, it won't be thanks to the design of the agency's new food pyramid. The flaws are myriad. There are no icons or labels to indicate which food group is represented by each band of the pyramid's vertical rainbow of stripes. The color choices are less than intuitive. The varying widths of the stripes represent the relative amounts of each food group you should eat, but you can't grasp that information in a glance. And the yellow stripe representing fats is so narrow it almost disappears. The old pyramid wasn't without flaws, but at least it clearly showed a diet hierarchy.

In short, after spending four years and $4.2 million, the USDA has screwed up a relatively simple concept. We gave four design teams a few days to rethink the presentation of the USDA's diet. Click here for a slide show of what they produced, with alternatives ranging from an interactive bar graph to a warning label.

FROM LINUS PAULING DIET AND OPTIMAL HEALTH MEETING MAY 18-22, 2005
For those with patience, here are my notes from one of the best professional meetings for M.D. and Ph.D. professionals involved in nutrition professionally. They have not been edited, and are slowly moving on to the appropriate web pages of Nutrition Investigator. Any mistakes are my own, but I have done my best to capture relevant exciting information I learned at this conference.

I. Old pyramid - Nurses Health Study, 100k women followed 35 years. Those who followed guidelines had only 3% reduction in chronic disease. In contrast, Willett's food pyramid gave 20% reduction in disease for men; 40% reduction in CHD

II. 3 components of 2005 guidelines
1. find balance in diet and exercise
2. choose a variety of foods
3. make smart choices in groups
To see the complete new dietary guidelines, click at www.healthierus.gov/dietaryguidelines

III. 60% of the US population is short on vitamins A, C, E, Ca, Mg, K, fiber, omega-3 fat, but high on calories, sat'd and trans fat, cholesterol, sugar, and salt. [editor's comment: too much vit A can be hazardous, it is controversial whether salt is hazardous in the diet.]

IV. Discretionary Calories are those available for snack foods, assuming the rest of your diet is nutrient-rich healthy fruits, vegetables, and other food to achieve the RDAs.