USDA Updates the Food Pyramid - How Useful is It?

By Wendy Gordon

As I was researching this article, my five year old son asked, "Why is that volcano on your screen? And there's a man climbing up it!" he noted, giggling.

At first glance, a volcano seems as good an explanation as any for the USDA's new symbol and website. The six different colored strips of magma streaking up the inside of the volcano (or food pyramid, as it's conventionally known) represent the same six food groups as the pyramid we've known since 1992 (grains, vegetables, fruits, fats and oils, milk products and high protein foods). But instead of being stacked according to recommended ser vings per day (grains at the bottom, fats and oils at the top) this modernistic drawing leaves itself open to multiple interpretations. The groups are represented by unlabeled, sleek, elongated triangles that vary in size only subtly. The meaning of the man running up the stairs is pretty clear if banal: exercise is good.

Presumably the reason for the vagueness of this design is to entice people onto the USDA website, where they can theoretically customize the USDA's recommendations to meet their individual nutritional requirements.

I clicked my way through the new website, a process that took several hours. The first step was simple. The website asked me to enter my age and one of three levels of daily exercise: under 20 minutes/day; 30-60 minutes/ day; and over 60 minutes/day "in addition to your regular routine." I wasn't sure how to answer the exercise question. My formal exercise program (gym visits, brisk walks) is sporadic, but my "daily routine" involves chasing after a small child, walking the streets of our hilly neighborhood, and caring for our organic garden. I settled on the middle category.

These entries gained me a recommendation of 2000 calories/day and entry into a mass of nutrition information comparable to that found in a high school health textbook. Certain differences from the prior pyramid were evident. Gone were the vague references to "servings" (remember how overwhelming 6 - 11 servings of grains used to sound?) replaced by serving sizes such as two cups. A separate chart lists examples of serving sizes of specific foods, but without pictures it remains difficult to visualize exactly what is meant by a cup of pasta.

Whole grains also get bigger billing under the new model which recommends that half of all grain servings come from whole grains. Vegetables gain prominence. My 2000 calorie diet plan recommended two cups of veggies a day, in addition to one and a half cups of fruit. The meat and beans category (which also includes eggs and tofu) has been slashed to minuscule proportions. My diet plan recommended 5.5 ounces a day. To give you an idea of how spartan that is, two scrambled eggs, a peanut butter sandwich, and a half chicken breast would well exceed the requirements. Fat and cholesterol limits are on the stricter edge of conventional wisdom at 20 -35 percentage of total fat, 10% saturated fat and 300 mg of cholesterol. Sodium limits are also low, less than 2000 mg/day. One recommendation that wasn't spartan was the one telling me I should drink three cups of (nonfat) milk per day or the equivalent in low fat cheese or yogurt. I guess the dairy lobby remains pretty active! The nutritional information makes note of some recent research, such as the role of potassium in preventing high blood pressure.

While most of this information was of value, I doubt it will change anyone's eating habits. Most people with the time, skills, and computer equipment necessary to navigate this site probably are already familiar with the elementary concepts presented. The nutritional model the USDA promotes differs significantly from the way most Americans eat. Despite their limited attempts at "personalization" the recommendations make little allowance for differences in individual taste and lifestyle. Nor do their food tips exhibit much respect for the taste of good food. I wonder if the nutritionists who developed them have ever actually tried pudding made with nonfat milk, or whole-wheat cereal sprinkled in their soup, or low fat cheddar in their whole grain macaroni and cheese. The website provides some information on vegetarian diets and lactose intolerance, but it is deep within the website, requiring several clicks on a complicated series of links to access. Edgier topics such as organic food, GMO's, or American's reliance on fast and processed food, are totally ignored.

You can probe deeper into your own nutritional profile by using My Pyramid Tracker. The tracker gives the average person access to tools previously available only to health professionals, providing a detailed analysis of their dietary intake and physical activity. I tested My Pyramid Tracker on myself, which proved to be another lengthy proposition, comparable to ordering items online from a very complicated website. Each food item must be entered separately. First you search for the food item, which requires the same guesswork as any other internet search. Assuming you find the item, after entering it you must switch to another screen to enter the quantity. Quantities presented often don't correlate with the amount eaten, so then you have to estimate the fraction eaten and enter it as a decimal (i.e .25).

When entering a diet history this way you have to be very careful not to forget any of the food elements, down to the butter on your bread and the olive oil you fried your veggies in. Also, you have to recall portion sizes accurately. Because I spent many years taking diet histories professionally I felt reasonably competent doing this but I doubt an untrained person would. Even so, I ran into many roadblocks. Since I tend to eat complex mixed foods that I prepare at home, breaking them down was a tedious process. I could not find certain food items that I entered, even though they were perfectly common. When I entered "red peppers," the only items that came up were two kinds of frozen pizza. I tried green peppers and the closest match I got was "sauteed green peppers and onions, fat added." When estimating the quantities of the different ingredients in my homemade chicken fajitas I'm sure I made some mistakes. How much of the two zucchinis in my recipe actually ended up on my plate? Who knows?

Estimating physical activity proved to be an even more daunting task. I needed to account for an entire 24 hours, or 1440 minutes. Entering less or more than the required 1440 number resulted in an error message. It's a weird experience trying to account for every minute of your day and realize how many of those moments just slipped away mysteriously. Again, you had to spend a long time searching for activity categories and trying to find one that matched. This was not always easy. For instance, there was no category for "playing with children." I finally compromised on a mixture of "carrying a small child" and "doing arts and crafts."

After completing the intakes, I was rewarded with a series of snazzy readouts. The first one compared my intake of the food groups, total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium, complete with an appropriate emotion. All my categories had smiley faces except for milk, where a sad face emphasized that I'd only drunk .3 cups of my three cup equivalent.

A second sheet provided a detailed nutrient intake analysis, compared with USDA recommendations. Again, most of these checked out OK. Interestingly, my calorie recommendations shrunk from 2000 kcal/day to a paltry 1651. Why, I wasn't sure. Perhaps the computer had decided that at five foot two and 120 pounds I was overweight. Interestingly, despite my frowning milk emotion and the fact that atypically I hadn't eaten any cheese that day, I still fulfilled 710.5 mg of my calcium requirement. The 1000 mg calcium supplement I take each day (and hadn't recorded) would easily put it over the top. A third sheet once again compared my food group intake with pyramid recommendations, this time in colorful graph form. The fourth sheet, despite the disproportionate amount of time I spent "sitting," "implied standing," or "driving," rated my physical activity as "good."

All the printouts required Adobe Acrobat Reader to print them out in PDF form.

Some people will inevitably enjoy filling out these intake forms, just like they enjoy taking personality tests. And just like personality tests, the inherent inaccuracies in their input will disqualify the pseudo-scientific accuracy of the results the computer spits out. For some highly motivated and computer savvy people who respond well to the Weight Watcher style of calorie counting, portion measuring diet control, the site may help them improve their diets and lose weight.

But on the whole I'd have to assess this $2.4 million four year venture as more style than substance.

Wendy Gordon is a writer and restaurant reviewer who lives in Portland, Oregon. She has a Masters Degree in Clinical Nutrition from the University of Chicago, and is on the Board of Directors of Food Front Grocery, a co-op in Portland.

Editor's Note: Check it out yourself at www.mypyramid.gov. Or try the spoof at www.mypyramid.org for a distinctly different experience!