The new food pyramid has a lot to offer – but it takes a little digging to find its hidden treasure.
Climbing to the Top of the Food Pyramid
They’ve tossed it on its side and added a rainbow of colors. But that’s just the beginning of the changes for the U.S. government’s new Food Pyramid.
But if you’re like many of us, you may be wondering, “What was wrong with the old pyramid?” And is everything they told us before no longer true?
The good news is that experts say the new guidelines themselves are quite similar to the old, with the graphic changes in the pyramid simply being more representational of what those guidelines are.
“There was nothing wrong with the old pyramid, except that it left too much open for interpretation; the new pyramid is more specific and more reflective of what the guidelines actually say,”
The Rainbow of Colors
These specifics include brightly colored vertical stripes, each representing one of six food groups: grains (orange — and the widest stripe), vegetables (green), fruits (red), oils (yellow — and the thinnest stripe), milk — including most foods made from milk (blue), and meat & beans (purple).
The stripes are also engineered to be wider at the bottom and narrower at the top, ostensibly to drive home the idea that not all foods within that group are of the same value.
“The idea is to make us aware of not only food groups, but choices within those groups,” says Nonas, who points out that an apple pie and an apple might fall within the same food group but not have equal nutritional value.
If, in fact, there is one new message today’s pyramid is shouting the loudest, it’s that we should not view a healthy diet in terms of food alone. While experts have always touted the benefits of exercise, the new pyramid — complete with a figure running up the side over a set of steps — is there to remind us that balancing healthy eating and physical activity are now married for life.
“Essentially the message here is move your body. The goal is to remind us of the importance of making movement a part of our everyday life and not just something we reserve for an hour once or twice a week at a gym,” says Jyni Holland, MS, RD, co-author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Weight Loss Tracker.
And while for many people the word “exercise” conjures up Hollywood images of expensive equipment and pricey personal trainers, Holland says that getting in our now-requisite quota of “daily moves” does not have to mean plunking down big bucks to sweat in a room filled with perfect strangers.
“The goal is for each of us to take 10,000 steps a day — and you can do that by simply getting off the bus two blocks before your stop, taking the stairs for a few flights, and bypassing the parking spot closest to the mall and looking for a space three or four rows back. Even doing routine housework like washing windows or vacuuming or mowing the lawn or pulling weeds — these are the ‘real life’ ways to incorporate exercise into our daily living,” Holland tells WebMD.
A pedometer can keep track of your number of steps and help motivate you to keep going.
The second new message: No single eating plan is right for all people. While getting that point across now involves navigating through 12 different pyramids — for men, women, and children of varying weights and ages — again, experts say the suggestion here is simpler than it seems.
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