Whose Pyramid?
For one thing — probably because I'm one of those radicals who tend to think that MicroSoft is the evil empire (recently confirmed) — I've always turned my nose up at anything quaintly called "My_____", since it always sounds to me like an unwarrented intrusion into already decaying standards of discourse by the evil empire's marketing and it reminds me of all those stupid folders on my XP desktop that need to be named MyThis and MyThat and MyThose and MyThese. Mine! Mine! Mine!
Anyway….
So, there's all this fuss going on about the new MyPyramid guideline thingie proposed by the USDA to replace the previous Food Pyramid, the one that looked like an exploded pyramid with little bits of food inside and the reasonably clear message: eat relatively more of the stuff at the bottom and less of the stuff at the top.
This new MyPyramid (sounds like Barbie healing herself with mystical pyramid power) is pretty sucky. There is just so much inprecise and devious and big-money-evil going on with the thing that's it's hard to decide where to start with a critique, or how to criticize it without sounding totally beyond the fringe.
Sexism — Let's start with something easy. Evidently in order to emphasize the value of exercise in maintaining good health, the pyramid has introduced a little humanoid graphic running up some stairs on the side of the pyramid. Fortunately, the little person can be construed as colorless; unfortunately, the little person clearly has no breasts and is a male (either wearing trousers or naked, it's ambiguous). So, women really don't need to feel at all personally involved with good nutrition. Perhaps the little man is really meant as some sort of high priest of nutrition, hence restricted (as tradition demands) to being a guy. I'm also a little bothered that he has neither hands nor feet.
Goodbye "Fat"! — I remember hearing that certain food producers (therefore: lobbyists) were annoyed with the previous food pyramid that referred to "fats" as "fats", and suggested keeping one's daily intake of "fats" on the lean side. They felt that this made them look bad since their food products typically had lots and lots of "fats". Well, in this new era of cowtowing to big corporations while pretending not to, that annoying little problem has been taken care of.
The new pyramid now refers to "oils" instead of "fats". This would be confusing enough, but then the helpful website goes on to answer penetrating questions like "How are oils different from solid fats?" (it basically says they're the same, but in language so opaque that it makes them sound like two different things), and "Why is it important to consume oils?" (suggesting that "fats" were to be avoided but "oils" should be consumed with less concern). Phew.
More, Never Less — "Eat Less" is apparently too negative for food guidelines and not supportive enough of [lobbying] food corporations. The advice found for the Green ("Vegetables") slice of the pyramid gives these three pointers:
- Eat more dark green veggies
- Eat more orange veggies
- Eat more dry beans and peas
What in the world should we eat less of, purple and blue "veggies"? Will growers of "light green veggies" now feel slighted? I also wonder whether we are allowed to cook those "dry beans" or whether the really crunchy dry bean is better for us.
I find it interesting, too, that "peas and beans" appear in "Vegetables" and "Meats and Beans" categories. For some reason "meats" don't show up in "oils", although "fish" does.
Verbal Ambiguity — In the interest of cutsie mottoes, we end up with silly and ambiguous catch phrases for the different "food groups" like
- "Make Half Your Grains Whole" — how? By glueing them together, perhaps?
- "Vary Your Veggies" — Apparently one can do this by making them different attractive colors, like orange and dark green. Variety is a good thing in one's diet, but what does it have to do with balancing the intake of foodstuffs beyond beginning with the same letter as "veggies".
- "Focus on Fruits" — since I'm gay, I don't mind if we focus on "fruits" really, but as nutritional advice it's pretty empty. How does one do this? By staring at the fruit intently, perhaps repeating its name over and over in a soft voice to achieve a state of fruity nirvana? "Choose Fresh, Frozen, Dried, or Canned Fruit" they say. What are the other kinds and what's wrong with the other kinds? They also suggest that we "Go Easy on Fruit Juices" — how much fruit juice is "easy"?
Visual Dishonesty — This was what originally drew my ire when I first looked at the colorful MyPyramid. The visual dishonesty is enough to curdle the stomach of Edward Tufte (author of The Visual Display of Quantitative Information).
The colored segments representing the different "food groups" inside the MyPyramid are different sizes, with the obvious implication that one should try to eat from the different groups in proportion to the size of that group's colored segment. Thus we find that the segment for "oils" is small, but the segment for "grains" and "vegetables" is relatively large. However, the area of the various segments, which evidently are meant to represent the relative proportions we are to eat from various "food groups" are nearly impossible to compare, since they are little wedges inside the pyramid. The different colors don't help, except to make sure that the yellow "oils" stand out even though its wedge is so small.
This MyPyramid manages to be extraordinarily non-quantitative, almost gratuitously so. Its main message seems to be the diluted: "Eat more of everything except stuff you should eat less of."
I suppose it might be possible to get the whole pyramid hastily scuttled by pointing out that the colorful new pyramid uses 6 colors, the same 6 colors as the GAY rainbow flag, indicating that the new pyramid is actually part of the vast militant homosexual conspiracy for world domination through healthful eating or something. Fortunately, to work, the rumor wouldn't have to be very specific, since right-wing people of hate (or "faith-based hate groups", I haven't decided yet on new nomenclature) have very, very vivid imaginations.
In: All, Raised Eyebrows Dept., Speaking of Science, Splenetics, Such Language!