28th
the pyramid scheme
when i was in human nutrition class in college, i remember we had an assignment to redesign the food pyramid. as a class we discussed the problems with the current version that was on every box of cereal. it seemed that the prevalent version that the government was endorsing was in fact a root problem in the state of obesity in our country. it wasn’t clear from any of the charts or photos what a serving of grains consisted of or how much a serving of meat was. people were assuming the servings sizes were much larger than they were intended to be. and not without cause, how many people do you know stop at six tortilla chips?
so our assignment was to redesign the food pyramid in a way that could be easily understood and incorporated into the average american’s daily lifestyle. what types of foods are they already eating? what changes do they need to make to their diet? how can we make that easy to see?
i don’t actually remember what my group did with the pyramid (this was several years ago), but i recently took a look at what the government ended up changing it to. rather than stacking the categories, they’ve aligned them up against each other proportionally according to how much of each category you should be consuming. if you check out their website, you can actually put in your specific body type and information and receive a customized pyramid guideline.
if you care to be so in depth, you can even do all of your food journaling through their site.
overall, i like this idea of the pyramid better than previous versions, but i still think the whole idea is skewed. i don’t think that a pyramid is the best image to associate with our dietary needs. i prefer a chart system, or a tally system, something akin to what the american dietetic association implements. then the focus isn’t on how many calories one is consuming, but more on the types of food, how they fit into categories, and how to incorporate what you want to eat into your diet.
just an interesting little tidbit of info.
i stand corrected. it seems the ada has joined in on the new pyramid.
