FYI

Will the Obama Administration’s New Food-Pie-Chart Thing Include Dessert?

Photo: iStockphoto

This Thursday, the Obama administration will unveil some new nutrition guidelines, and along the way they’re going to be ditching the twenty-year-old food pyramid in favor of a radical new shape that tells us what to be eating: a pie chart. Oh, but don’t actually call it a “pie chart,” or liken it to pizza, either. It’s being called a “plate” — similar to the “power plate” those kooky vegan doctors were suggesting — and it will contain four colored sections: fruits, vegetables, grains, and protein. The idea is that Americans will then be able to better visualize what a balanced meal should look like. But what we’re seeing is a problem with the rumored design: There’s no mention of dessert!

Is that really realistic? Americans love sweets, and we are fast coming up on ice-cream season. As such, we’d like suggest a return to the idea of the threat-level color coding. It’d start at blue, for the times you maybe walk by a Mr. Softee truck and the line isn’t too bad, and go all the way up to red, for the occasional Dessert Emergency.

Goodbye Food Pyramid, Hello Dinner Plate [NYT]

Will the Obama Administration’s New Food-Pie-Chart Thing Include Dessert?