The Food Pyramid

I really dislike the new logo for the Food Guide Pyramid (now called My Pyramid).



They wanted to include Exercise as an important component of each day. This isn't something I disagree with, but the old Food Guide Pyramid was MUCH easier for kids to understand.





My daughter brought home her Food Pyramid poster from 4-H and there was nothing really very remarkable about it. Pretty basic -- her teacher drew a large triangle and then divided it into the appropriate sections. The bottom is the Bread/Grains group. Next up you have a portion for Fruits and a portion for Vegetables. Above that is Protein (eggs, milk, meat, beans). On top is Fats, Oils and Sweets, use sparingly. The phrase 'use sparingly' is inextricably linked in my mind with Fats, Oils, and Sweets. Which just goes to show you how much they drummed it into my brain when we were in school. They colored each section a different color and then Leah cut out pictures from magazines of different foods and glued them where they belong.

All of this was simple enough, and I recommend it to anyone doing nutrition with young children, but we accidentally took it to the next level by hanging it up on the wall by the kitchen table. This was at Leah's insistence. She suggested that it would help the girls pack healthy lunches for school each day and I agreed. Come to find out, my daughters spend every meal talking about the Food Pyramid. What they had for breakfast, what they had for lunch, what they had for dinner, whether they hit all their food groups, what they still need to eat in order to have a balanced day, whether they should have a dessert with dinner or whether they already had something sweet at lunch, and so on... I have NEVER had so many conversations about nutrition in such a short time frame. To tell you the truth, I'm getting rather sick of it, but it is so good for them to internalize that balance that we will keep the poster up. My friend gave me the simplest rule for nutrition ever, and that's the one I carry around in my head. Everything in moderation & eat mostly plants.