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It has been twelve
years since the United States Department of Agriculture has updated the
Food Pyramid. Most of us are familiar with the old one. That pyramid
emphasized foods you should eat more of on the bottom of the pyramid
with foods to be eaten in smaller amounts on the top. The New Food
Pyramid is an inverse pyramid. The food groups are color coded, with
the size of the sections emphasizing the proportions of foods eaten in
each group. You will also notice a figure, climbing some steps, on the
side of the pyramid which symbolizes exercise as a part of the total
plan.
The following are
four important changes in the New Food Pyramid:
1 Have at least
three ounces of your grains be whole grains. On a 2,000 calorie meal
plan that would amount to one half of the grains allotted. Some
examples of whole grains are millet, wheat , rye, whole wheat pasta and
brown rice. Be careful in reading the labels on bread. If the loaf of
bread is truly whole wheat the first ingredient on the label should be
whole wheat flour.
2 There is an
emphasis on nonfat and low fat in the milk and dairy group. On a 2,000
calorie meal plan, three cups of dairy is recommended. Dairy foods that
are not sources of calcium are not included in this group. Some
examples of these would be cream cheese, cream and butter. One cup of
yogurt equals one cup of milk. One and one half ounces of cheese equals
one cup of milk.
3 There is an
emphasis on lean meats and less meat in the meat group. A 2,000 calorie
plan allotment is five and one half ounces of meat. This would be one
quarter pound lean hamburger and one ounce of lean meat on a sandwich
for the day. The old Food Pyramid allowed two to three servings in this
group.
4 There is an
emphasis on exercise being needed when following the new plan. The new
plan suggests being physically active for at least thirty minutes, on
most days of the week. Sixty minutes of exercise is suggested to
prevent weight gain and sixty to ninety minutes to lose weight.
While I feel that
these changes are an improvement over the old Food Pyramid, I have some
concerns. If you visit www.mypyramid.gov, you can input your age,
gender and physical activity level and receive a personal plan. I did
this. I found the caloric intake to be a little high. A very loose rule
of thumb for maintaining a certain weight is to take the amount of
weight that you want to maintain and multiply it by ten. A one hundred
and thirty pound maintenance is about thirteen hundred calories a day.
This does not take in activity level, however. If you are more active
you can add a few more calories and if you are very active you may be
able to increase your caloric intake to eighteen hundred calories.
The caloric amount
suggested in the individual plans, in the New Food Pyramid, would be
appropriate for growing children, teenagers, or persons with high
activity levels. So use the New Food Pyramid only as a guide. While it
would be optimum if we could all exercise for sixty to ninety minutes a
day, it is not practical to expect that everyone will. With thirty
minutes of activity a day, you need to modify your caloric intake and
if necessary take a vitamin supplement that contains the minimum
requirements.
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