Changing the Food Guide Pyramid

The USDA is on a mission to revise their silly Food Guide Pyramid (warning, it’s a PDF file) in an attempt to effect a “behavioral change”.  Imagine, a government agency coming up with a pretty-sounding but obviously ineffective way to solve a growing problem.  Who woulda thunk it?.

The problem they’re trying to address is the 60% of obese or overweight adults in this country.  The idea of the modified Food Guide Pyramid is to help consumers tailor their diets to their own special needs.  Sounds great, right?  I wonder, though, how many people have even heard of the Food Pyramid.  There’s an idea.  Stake out McDonald’s and ask the first 100 adults you see whether they’ve heard of it.  Those who have heard of it probably can’t describe the contents although I’ll bet they can rattle off the four basic food groups (or a variant, like Beer, Sugar, Caffeine, and Fried Stuff).  It’s painfully obvious that people don’t care about the USDA’s Food Guide Pyramid.  If they did, McDonald’s wouldn’t still be in business.