Students are taught it, health nuts follow it, critics bash it and Tuesday the food pyramid got a make-over.
The Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services announced a redesign of the traditional food pyramid, turning it on its side, color coding the different food groups and adding the image of a person climbing the side to promote physical activity.
Instead of one food pyramid, there will now be 12, each one adjusted for age, gender and amount of physical activity.
The “Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2005” was released in January by the two organizations as a guideline for healthy eating and exercise.
The new pyramids are a supplement to that guide and available in an interactive form on the USDA Web site, MyPyramid.com.
The release of the new pyramid is accompanied by an online campaign on the USDA Web site that includes guides to eating, exercise and balancing the two.
Previously, the pyramid was composed of bricks made from horizontal lines, each representing a different food group. Each group was assigned a number of suggested servings per day.
Instead of bricks, the new pyramid has triangles for each group created by vertical lines that meet at the top of the triangle.
Each food group is color-coded — orange for grains, green for vegetables, red for fruits, yellow for oils, blue for milk and purple for meats and beans.
The different colored triangles vary in size depending on the suggested consumption of each group. The largest group is grains followed by milk and vegetables then fruit, with meats and beans and oil as the smallest.
The new pyramid design does not specify serving sizes within the pyramid because there are 12 variations for different ages, genders and amount of daily physical activity.
Susan Laramee, president of the American Dietetic Association, said in a statement that the group is pleased that the symbol of a pyramid was retained after speculation that the USDA would change symbols.
“ADA believes no one graphic symbol can or should serve as a stand-alone consumer nutrition educations tool,” Laramee said, adding that a full educational push is necessary to improve Americans’ eating habits.
David Heidke, director of LSU Dining, said LSU Dinning will begin to adjust their programs and educational literature to reflect the change in the pyramid.
The Grocery Manufactures of America announced today in a statement that they will begin to promote the new pyramid by using it on their products.
GMA has also established a partnership with the publishers of Weekly Reader — a magazine distributed to teachers, students and parents across the country in two languages — to distribute 58,000 packets with the new pyramid design to teachers that subscribe to the magazine.
The packets will include a teacher’s guide, student activities and a bilingual component to be taken home to parents.