10,000 Steps a day

The Food Pyramid:

If there is one new message today's pyramid is shouting the loudest, it's that we should not view a healthy diet in terms of food alone.

While experts have always touted the benefits of exercise.

The new pyramid, complete with a figure running up the side over a set of steps, is there to remind us that healthy eating and exercise are now married for life.

Essentially the message here is move your body.

The goal is to remind us of the importance of making movement a part of our everyday life and not just something we reserve for an hour once or twice a week at a gym," says Jyni Holland, MS, RD, co-author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Weight Loss Tracker.

While for most people even just the word "exercise" conjures up images of expensive equipment and pricey personal trainers.

Getting in our now-requisite quota of "daily moves" does not have to mean plunking down big bucks to sweat in a room filled with perfect strangers.

"The goal is for each of us to take 10,000 steps a day -- and you can do that by simply getting off the bus two blocks before your stop, taking the stairs for a few flights, and bypassing the parking spot closest to the mall and looking for a space three or four rows back.

Even doing routine housework like washing windows or vacuuming or mowing the lawn or pulling weeds -- these are the 'real life' ways to incorporate exercise into our daily living.

A pedometer can keep track of your number of steps and help motivate you to keep going.

New Food Guide confusing?

Unfortunately, make just one visit to www.mypyramid.gov and you'll soon discover that making your food choices might seem like it's easier said than done.

Indeed, among the criticisms that surfaced since the pyramid debuted is that the new system is simply too confusing to be of much use.

"The new design does not clearly communicate which foods Americans should be eating more of (fruits, vegetables, whole grains, low-fat dairy, lean meat, and beans), or what Americans should be eating less of (refined grains, whole milk, cheese, hamburgers, and soda).

"I think it's immediately more confusing and a little hard for some people, but I think that years down the road it will prove beneficial," Nonas tells WebMD

At the same time, other experts say that by mastering just a little bit of a learning curve, all Americans can gather some vital data from the pyramid.

The information from the pyramid just might help us turn around some nasty eating habits, as well as our burgeoning obesity epidemic.

food guide colors

The Rainbow of Colors

These specifics include brightly colored vertical stripes, each representing one of six food groups:
Grains (orange -- and the widest stripe),
Vegetables (green),
Fruits (red),
Oils (yellow -- and the thinnest stripe),
Milk -- including most foods made from milk (blue),
Meat & beans (purple).


The stripes are also engineered to be wider at the bottom and narrower at the top, ostensibly to drive home the idea that not all foods within that group are of the same value.

"The idea is to make us aware of not only food groups, but choices within those groups," says Nonas, who points out that an apple pie and an apple might fall within the same food group but not have equal nutritional value.