On Healthy Living

The government unveiled today the next generation of food pyramid, actually a series of 12 different sets of steps that can be customized for each indivuidual. If you’d like to find the “pyramid” that’s right for you, check out the USDA’s new website devoted to the diet plans.

The site, understanadably, is running very slow right now (as every news organization in the coutry tries to access it) but if you can get it to work you will be able to enter some basic information about yourself and find the diet plan that the government thinks will work best for you. It asks age, sex and level of physical activity you get “most days” (the choices being none, less than 30 minutes, 30 to 60 minutes and more than 60 minutes). I chose 30-60 even though it’s not always true.

The immediate flaw I see with the system is that it doesn’t ask your weight, adn for some reason it decided I need 2,200 calories a day. If I ate that much, well, there’d be a lot more of me to love.

But the recommendations themselves seem sound: 7 ounces of grains, 3 cups of vegetables, 2 cups of fruit, 3 cups of milk (obviously the dairy lobby got to them on this one) and 6 ounces of meat or beans (at least it says beans and doesn’t insist I eat meat, but it should include tofu there, too, since most people consider it something other than a bean) daily. It suggests 3.5 servings of whole grains daily and three cups of dark green leafy vegetables weekly. It says to use no more than six teaspoons of oil and to limit “extras” to 290 calories daily (which seems like a lot, but that’s just barely more than the calories in a Twix bar, is about eight Resses’ minitures cups, or about three beers or less than two regular sodas).

It certainly sounds like these guidelines lean toward a more vegetarian lifestyle than anything we’ve seen out of the government before. Which of course sounds pretty good to me. The site also offers tips, dietary guidelines and information for professionals to help them use this information for their clients. Of course I couldn’t access any of that becasue the site was too busy, but it still looks like a good idea that can potentially help a lot of people eat healthier and live longer, better lives.

Sarah White wrote this on April 19th, 2005 and filed it under Healthy Living, Diet & Exercise, Healthy Cooking, Healthy Eating, Women's Health, Health Foods, Men's Health |