The USDA's Latest Nutrition Pyramid

The United States Department of Agriculture released a new nutrition and diet plan for Americans in April 2005. This was done in conjunction with an excellent new website which looks in great detail, and in a user friendly way, at the nutrition pyramid. I must say, the nutrition pyramid website is a delight to use, well designed and pretty to look at; probably one of the best diet and weight loss related websites around.

There cannot be many Government websites around the world, on any subject, better than the USDA's MyPyramid.gov. It is in depth, detailed and helpful. One super feature is the way you can create a personal nutrition plan. For example, I input my age, physical activity, and sex and was immediately given an outline plan to consume 2200 calories a day within the nutrition pyramid guidelines. Those 2200 were then broken down into food groups:

Grains - 7 ounces

Vegetables - 3 cups

Fruits - 2 cups

Milk - 3 cups

Meat and beans - 6 ounces

Once that food summary is displayed, you can click on tips against each food group to get further nutrition pyramid advice. The section on grains brought up some very informative tips about whole grain foods such as bread and brown rice, plus substituting whole grain cereal for bread crumbs in toppings.

Other sample tips to help you get the most out of the nutrition pyramid were:

Vegetables - Try vegetables raw and crunchy, or only lightly steamed.

Meat and beans - Replace some of the meat in your diet with nuts.

Fruits - When baking, you can use apple sauce as a fat free substitute for oil

Milk - Change from whole milk to fat-free gradually, rather than try to force yourself to do it suddenly

There is yet more to this excellent nutrition pyramid website. The feature tagged as My Pyramid Tracker is well worth clicking on and using to track your own diet against an optimum diet.The Pyramid Tracker is a great tool to help you watch your diet. All you do is enter the foods that you eat in a typical day, click Analyze, and you'll get a detailed analysis that includes the calories, the amount of over 25 specific nutrients, the difference between your diet and an optimum diet, and specific recommendations for changes you should make to eat a healthier diet. Better still, you can save your history day by day to keep track of your eating habits, and then watch the improvements.