Humor by John Christmann
Digesting The Pyramids
I discovered recently that in an effort to ensure Americans are eating right, the US Department of Agriculture has replaced the ubiquitous food pyramid with something resembling a neatly formatted TV dinner. The new USDA MyPlate graphic depicts a round plate containing pie-sectioned quantities of fruits, vegetables, protein, and grain with a glass of milk to the side.
In an apparent oversight, there is no napkin.
For those of you like me, who are now hopelessly confused by the correct portion of government advice we are to consume in our diet, let me give you . . .
A Brief History of Nutrition
In the beginning there were only three foods: vegetables from the Garden of Eden, snake meat (which was pretty unappealing), and apples. At that time the leading authority on nutrition, The US Department of God, believed fruit was very, very bad for people. This, of course, made apples extremely desirable, and in a moment of weakness Eve ate the forbidden fruit and unwittingly unleashed new and improved sinful foods into the world: foods like chocolate, Hagen Daaz ice cream, and Cheez Doodles.
Shortly there after, when Adam and Eve began begating children, bread and dairy products were introduced because their kids wouldn’t eat anything but milk and peanut butter sandwiches. Thus the basic dietary ingredients were formed: meats, vegetables, fruits, grains, dairy products and all of the evil stuff that tasted really good.
Man lived on this core diet for millennia. Children thrived. French restaurants blossomed. Life expectancy improved. Things were good. Very, very good.
Then, during the mid 1900s the US Department of Agriculture decided to simplify the food groups to make it easier for Americans to understand, because with the introduction of TV to society, we had forgotten how to eat.
The USDA combined fruits and vegetables into one category to make four groups and then recommended that we eat three square meals a day, the square referring to the four basic food groups which we ate on round plates. They also introduced the concept of a Recommended Daily Allowance so we would know when to stop eating and also have something educational to read on cereal boxes.
This worked well until they realized they had omitted the sinful food group, which of course, had no recommended daily allowance and was therefore gobbled up in abundance. So the USDA added a fifth food group, and to make it even more enticing, threw in alcoholic beverages with the strict warning that these foods be consumed in moderation.
Unfortunately, this new classification scheme really did confuse people, who by this time were used to sitting on a couch in front of a TV moderately consuming Oreo cookies and beer three, four, and even seven times a day. So the USDA threw all of the food we eat into a triangle and called in a pyramid.
The good stuff, which we weren’t supposed to eat, was at the top. The stuff that no one wanted to eat was at the bottom so we would know we were supposed to eat more of it. And this was fine until the morning news shows started trotting out nutrition experts and scientists who claimed that the bad stuff wasn’t always bad and the good stuff wasn’t always good and everybody started drinking red wine to prevent heart attacks.
So the USDA took the food pyramid, which was really a food triangle, put it on it’s side, color coded the original six groups spawned by Adam and Eve so that we would know to eat enough blue and orange food, and put a little man walking up the stairs to signify exercise and actually make the triangle look like a pyramid. Then they called it MyPyramid even though it was supposed to be for us.
Oh, and somewhere during this time McDonalds introduced the Happy Meal, which as far as I can tell has no food group classification.
So now we find the USDA has determined the new improved food pyramid is too confusing for people like you and me who have been eating all of our lives. In its place they have introduced the food plate to actually depict how food is commonly served because it turns out very few of us eat Cheerios from a pyramid.
While I applaud their efforts, this new depiction of healthy eating is clearly not intended for me. Especially the depiction of fruits and vegetables covering half the plate. I’m sorry, but I just can’t eat this sort of thing off my lap in the car each morning.
The good news is that the little man running up the stair is gone, so I guess we can stop exercising.
My advice? Listen to your body and use common sense.
Remember, we were all healthy as children. It’s as adults that we have a problem.
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