anyone out there interested in talking about food pyramids? how effective are they in our lives? are they flawed? need your views...

Interesting. Do you think they are flawed? I am also interested in this topic.

I have also heard that pyramids may be inaccurate. Can anyone provide more info?

yeah in need of some views/learning points of observation...
thank you...

i agree this is a very good topic to discuss. i believe the food pyramid is not flawed - it is a simple visual recommended for the AVERAGE HEALTHY adults with a sense that no extra supplementation is needed. it acts as a tool to discuss portion size especially for weight management. however, i don't think one tool (or any single tool) can emcompass every aspects of food and i wish it could be updated more often with new and ethnic foods. to be honest, there are certain foods i don't know which category it should go under. for instance: calcium-fortified orange juice - should it be under dairy (based on the calcium content) or should it be under fruits/veggies? if someone drinks a glass of calcium-fortifed orange juice, does that mean it can substitute a glass of milk? the answer is yes if we are only thinking of calcium; the answer is no if we are only thinking of protein/other nutrients. this is definitely a complex issue.

other comments/suggestions is welcome!!

The food pyramid is out of date. Thats my opinion at least. It needs extreme restructuring. With all of the new scientific discoveries with foods and effects on the body, with supplementation and adjusting of foods, it is just not an accurate guide anymore. They need to find the core of each sector (what the actual goal is for eating these amounts of foods in the quadrants) and make it a more nutrient type based guide. If they want you to recieve calcium, then dont say dairy, say calcium rich foods. (this would alleviate the OJ situation). If the goal of the grains portion is fiber (dont think it is, lol), then say Fiber rich foods. There is no need for them to generalize anymore and just say "fruits". Everything now has a nutritional statement on it and we can take 5 seconds to look at the side of a box to see what we will get out of a specific food.

Jay you have raised an interesting point. your suggestion seems to be very straight forward, but when there are 13 vitamins and 11 minerals and those hard-to-spell antioxidants, i'm not sure how they can have so many categories like Vitamin B1 rich foods, Vitamin B2 rich foods etc!!!in addition, many foods contain more than 1 nutrient. i think the current system is sufficient to encompass most foods and is able to teach most people about number of daily servings, but somebody really have to think of presenting the food pyramid a different way as people now don't eat just to fill up the stomach and prevent deficiency, many of us eat to promote health. don't you agree?