There’s been a lot of complaints that the USDA’s new food pyramid is too complicated, with one columnist joking

The new food pyramid looks much like the old pyramid, dressed up for a gay pride parade. An interesting add-on is a hieroglyphic of a stick figure and a staircase.

As unoriginal as the gay/rainbow joke is, he does have a point. The new pyramid kinda sucks :

Nevermind the fact that changing the pyramid from a horizontal to vertical orientation defeats the whole purpose of having a pyramid in the first place, what’s really, really dumb is that tacked on stick figure guy seems more like an afterthought (“Oh yeah…don’t forget to exercise.”).

Design considerations aside, I have to give the USDA an enormous amount of credit for finally recognizing that not everyone needs to have the exact same diet.

MyPyramid, which replaces the Food Guide Pyramid introduced in 1992, is part of an overall food guidance system that emphasizes the need for a more individualized approach to improving diet and lifestyle.

?MyPyramid is about the ability of Americans to personalize their approach when choosing a healthier lifestyle that balances nutrition and exercise,? said Johanns. ?Many Americans can dramatically improve their overall health by making modest improvements to their diets and by incorporating regular physical activity into their daily lives.?
. . .
The new food guidance system utilizes interactive technology found on MyPyramid.gov. MyPyramid contains interactive activities that make it easy for individuals to key in their age, gender and physical activity level so that they can get a more personalized recommendation on their daily calorie level based on the 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. It also allows individuals to find general food guidance and suggestions for making smart choices from each food group.

Now raise your hand if you’d already assumed that based on the picture of the stick figure climbing the stairs of the rainbow triangle…anyone??

That’s what I thought. If you go to MyPyramid.gov, you’re prompted for your age, gender, and the amount of physical activity you do per day. From those three pieces of information, you’re given a personalized diet breakdown, but even then, things are too simplistic. If you’re going to gather personal information, why not take it a step further to make things even more personalized??

For example, if I tell the website that I’m a 29-year-old male who doesn’t work out¹, it gives me a diet that recommends that I consume 2400 calories per day. That seems like an appropriate calorie target, but it doesn’t take into account two very important factors : height and weight. If MyPyramid.gov gathered this information as well, they could figure out my base metabolic rate and weigh it against my stated amount of physical activity to determine (a) whether I need to gain, lose, or maintain weight and (b) what diet could help me achieve those goals. All it would require is two extra form fields and a little bit of math.

It’s pretty obvious that the goal of this new food pyramid is to help people loose weight, but half-assed approach to personalization and the lack of emphasis on physical activity makes things much more confusing than they need to be. Personally, I think they should keep the personalization aspect of the food pyramid² and make it part of a larger “health scale” sort of effort :

Since about mid-January or so, I’ve lost thirty pounds and it’s mostly due to simply thinking of weight loss in the terms of our body’s input vs. output. If we consume more calories than we burn, the scale tips too far to the right and we gain weight. If we burn more than we consume, the scale tips to the left and we lose weight. The key to making this work, however, is paying attention to how much you consume as well as how many calories you burn per day³. Granted, it’s a little more complicated than that⁴, but it this goes a lot further than the repeated implication from the USDA that changing your diet alone can make you healthier. Not to mention the fact that it’s more goal-oriented and easier to understand than the new MyPyramid.

UPDATE : Slate has more recommendations for the food pyramid here. Most of them are way too complicated, but I love their idea for warning labels on unhealthy food.

^{1 : Which isn’t true. I work out three times per week. Even if it were true though, the next page should immediately suggest a moderate amount of exercise before even getting into the diet recommendations.}

2 : I’d also love to see them take it a step further to allow additional personalization for diets based on lifestyle choices (vegan, kosher, etc.) or food allergies.

3 :Which is why knowing your base metabolic rate is so important. If you don’t know how many calories you burn by sitting around doing nothing, you’ll never be able to adequately plan your diet.

4 : Since an unbalanced diet will almost always weigh down the right side of the scale.