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The government's new food pyramid replaces "one size fits all" with a customizable eating and exercise plan.
AN ACTIVE 25-year-old man and a sedentary 75-year-old woman have very different nutritional and caloric needs. But until now, the US government's food pyramid, introduced in 1992, has given them-and all the varieties of ages and lifestyles in between-the same graphical dietary advice.
The new pyramid, unveiled this spring to reflect recent revisions to the federal dietary guidelines, replaces that one-size-fits-all approach with a dozen different versions, customized to your age, gender and activity level. Dubbed MyPyramid, it's the entry point to a sophisticated suite of tools you can use to match your eating and exercise to the latest nutritional knowledge.
Besides being customizable, the new pyramid also flips the familiar food bands sideways. A rainbow of vertical color bands symbolizes variety among the five food groups and oils. The varying widths represent the updated dietary guidelines' recommendations of the relative proportions you should consume from each food group. Although these do not represent exact proportions, they provide a general guide to eating grains (orange), vegetables (green), fruits (red), milk and milk products (blue), meat and beans (purple) and fats and oils (yellow). Foods from all groups are needed each day for good health. Moderation is represented by the narrowing of each food group from bottom to top. The wider base stands for foods with little or no solid fats, added sugars or caloric sweeteners. These should be selected more often to get the most nutrition from calories consumed.
Also new is a step-climbing stick figure on the pyramid's left side, emphasizing the importance of getting daily exercise and matching the program's slogan, "Steps to a Healthier You." The recommendation is for adults to engage in at least 30 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity on most, preferably all days of the week.
"No one single graphic can capture all the recommendations in the new dietary guidelines," cautions Eric Hentges, director of the US Agriculture Department's (USDA) Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion. The revised guidelines, which are based on the most up-to-date science, he notes, include 23 recommendations for the general population plus 18 for specialized groups. "MyPyramid is designed to be simple but...