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| Make sure to have a glass of milk or a History wedge piece from Trivial Pursuit with every meal. (Credit: http://robertleehaller.com/foodgroups.htm) |
Those of us who are old enough to remember the four food groups probably still remember what those groups were: meats, grains, fruits and vegetables, and dairy. I'd speculate that it's where the term "square meals" originated, and it was a pretty easy thing to remember. Problem is, it never really conveyed proportions. Sure, it promoted balance and helped prevent nutritional deficiencies, but if you looked at it as four equal portions, you'd be eating way more meat and dairy than you should be. I even recall an elementary school field trip to a hospital where we were quizzed on what foods were nutritionally balanced. When they asked us if a supreme pizza was good for us (in that context), many of us were quick to reject it because we knew it was "unhealthy" because it was "delicious" and "not green and leafy"-- common counter-indicators of healthy foods. But no, they said with the tone of one who has cunningly ensnared a bunch of third graders with a trick question. Based on the four food groups, pizza was generally a balanced meal, though one to be eaten sparingly. I don't suspect that this was the point of the question, but their ruse showed that the four food groups were not the ideal method for remembering how to stay healthy and well nourished. However, it turned out to be a very, very effective mnemonic, even if it wasn't much more than a list. It got wide exposure and extensive coverage in schools, so everybody knew their four food groups. Before long, though, the USDA decided we needed something that suggested a more balanced diet as well as a nutritionally complete one.
The solution was introduced in 1992. It was grandly hyped and paraded about as the new and improved method to remember what to eat and now how much of it to eat. Finally, Americans could stop eating giant slabs of cheese with their meals! Their solution was the Food Pyramid:
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| Be sure not to disturb the baguette. Legend says it's cursed. (Credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_guide_pyramid) |
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| I don't know what you mean, "I'm out of shape." I'm the same shape as the Food Pyramid. That's good, right? (Credit: http://devan1.tripod.com/jabba.htm and Lucasfilm) |
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| The stairs leading nowhere represent an exercise in futility. (Credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_guide_pyramid) |
Really?
Okay, so here's an exercise. Look at the image for a good 5 seconds, then look back here. How many groups did you see? Remember that answer, now look back and specifically count the groups. If you came out with different numbers each time, then obviously there's a problem with this diagram. If you came out with the same number both times, give the USDA 10 points if that number was 6. If it was 5, deduct a million from their score. Raise your hand if you spotted the tiny yellow sliver between the red Fruits section and the blue Milk section. The one with no label, no representation at the bottom, no indicator of any kind of its existence apart from a narrow yellow sliver (the most difficult hue to distinguish from white) and a tiny bottle of vegetable oil buried in the morass of random food clip art. You know, the kind of bottle that you would probably only recognize if you cook, specifically with oil that comes in a similar container to that. As if people ate vegetable oil anyway. The number of problems with this design makes my head spin. As of 2005 though, this was the state of the art of nutritional education: a clipart stick figure from 1997 climbing stairs attached to a rainbow whose pot of gold was replaced by a shopping cart accident.
Now, I've done all of this complaining because I wanted to contextualize the next design, which was rolled out just this month, June 2011, after 19 years of pyramidal iconography trying desperately to represent the foods you should and shouldn't eat. While I'm going to miss feeling like I'm raiding the pharaoh's tomb every time I have a cracker, the new design is something of a revelation compared to the old ones. Behold, MyPlate:
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| MyBrain still wants to leap out of MySkull every time I see anybody brand a design as MySomething though. |
It's hard to believe, but after the steady and painful decline of sensibility in the USDA's nutritional imagery, I think they really knocked this one out of the park. Congratulations, USDA. You've ended your 55-year ingenuity dry spell.
So, do you like the new design? Think it just might work? I'd love to hear any other opinions on the matter.
Might want to use a different pic of Jabba (or the same pic, hosted elsewhere). The first time I loaded the page, I got the "Image hosted by Tripod" graphic. Once I manually viewed the image using its hyperlink, it loaded properly, so I suspect it looks fine to you.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, as far as more substantial commentary, I think your criticism of the original pyramid is a bit overblown-- I thought it was a reasonable representation (though your attack on "MyPyramid" was more than fair). And I'm not quite as sold on the MyPlate icon as you are-- apart from looking more modern, I don't see a huge advantage over the pyramid.
On the other hand, it always kind of threw me when I'd see that we were supposed to eat 6-11 "servings" of grain per day. Made me wonder what exactly constituted a "serving". It seems to imply that we're supposed to eat about three different grain items per meal or enough of one for three people. MyPlate's ratios at least seem to make more intuitive sense.
Thanks for the heads up on the image.
ReplyDeleteThe original pyramid isn't a disastrous information visualization in terms of conveying the requirements, but it's not quickly intuitive. You have to spend some time interpreting the graphic, and there isn't any real memorability to it. I think its greatest sin is that it ignores the expectation of hierarchy that would dictate the topmost piece be the most important one. People don't innately think in terms of architectural support to see that grains and carbs are foundational. Instead they see the topmost point as the most important member of the hierarchy, which is completely wrong for this diagram.
As for MyPlate, the real win of the design is that it's a _usable_ graphic. You can lay out a plate based on the proportions it provides, which are extremely visual and very easy to approximate off-hand. You can look down at a plate and fill it halfway with fruits and vegetables (erring in favor of veggies), then add a little over a quarter-plate of carbs and the rest goes to protein. Dairy, however, may be over-represented by looking like a glass-- potentially leading to a glass of milk with every meal, which is probably way too much dairy. I'd say that's its biggest fault as a visualization.
The biggest strength in my opinion is that I was able, just now, to lay that out by memory without referencing the image. I didn't study it for any great length of time, either. It gives just about all the information you need on what you should eat and in what proportion in a memorable, usable fashion. Huge win in my book.
I can lay out the food pyramid by memory, too, but then I'm weird. I might be a little off if I had to recite the number of servings, though, especially if I had to nail both ends of the ranges.
ReplyDeleteAnd I think you may exaggerate the natural hierarchical perception of a pyramid, but then maybe I've just seen too many of them that seem to represent some kind of progression (for whatever reason) rather than an order of importance or desirability.