As I’m trying to balance getting the nutrition I need without going over my calorie goals, I’m learning more about food and nutrition than I was ever taught in any health class in school. I even started college with a nutrition minor!
When I was in school, this food pyramid was pretty much all we were taught about nutrition. Let’s take a closer look at it starting from the top.
Fats, Oils & Sweets – Use Sparingly: What is sparingly? If you used one swirl around the pan of oil to saute some vegetables and a swirl around another pan to make sure your chicken breast didn’t stick would you think that may be “sparingly”? It’s nothing like frying something submersed in oil. Yet those two swirls around the pan of oil would add about 240 calories to your intake for the day. So how much is sparingly?
Milk, Yogurt & Cheese – 2 to 3 servings: The broad nature of this group is misleading. Some people may look at it and think they should eat cheese 3 times a day if they don’t like milk or yogurt. If you were to eat 3 servings of cheddar cheese in a day you would be getting nearly 30 grams of fat from that alone. And how much is a serving of cheese anyway? Well it’s an ounce of course. How much is an ounce? You won’t really know unless you get a food scale. But that was never mentioned along with the food pyramid.
Meat, Poultry, Dry Beans, Eggs & Nuts – 2 to 3 servings: Okay so at least with meats we were told that a serving was about the size of a deck of cards. But, there was never a discussion about the difference in proteins and how many calories were in chicken versus steak versus lamb or how much cholesterol is in red meat. And how much is a serving of beans or nuts? What are the benefits of choosing lentils over meat? None of this was ever mentioned. We were just told to eat 2 to 3 protein servings a day.
Vegetables – 3 to 5 servings: There’s not much to say here except that we should encourage more veggies in my opinion. And we never received any education about the best way to eat vegetables and what the best ones to eat are. Not all vegetables are created equal. Should I have 3 servings of celery a day? That’s not going to do much. What about canned or frozen vegetables? Are those better or worse than fresh? Do I need to worry about sodium in packaged vegetables? If I cook vegetables does the nutritional content change and does that matter?
Fruits – 2 to 4 servings: In it’s purest form this is great advice. But, just like with the vegetable category, no one ever went over fruit choices. There are plenty of canned and packaged fruit options that have just as much added sugar as candy. What about fruit snacks that say they have a full serving of fruit? Or what about drinking fruit juice? Will I get the same benefit from juice as I do from eating the fruit itself? Is there added sugar in fruit juice?
Bread, Cereal, Rice & Pasta – 6 to 11 servings: 6 to 11 servings of grains a day?! Even in the best scenario where I ate 11 servings of whole wheat bread with 80 calories in a serving, that would still comprise nearly half of the calories someone my size should eat in a day. And in the worst case scenario, if I ate 11 servings of white rice I would surpass my caloric intake needs for the day with just that one part of the food pyramid.
Now, if I were to eat the low end of what the old food pyramid tells me to eat in a day and made the best choices with each category and not eat anything packaged or with added sugars, I would eat about 1600 calories a day. So, if I was armed with the information about what food choices to make and what were “good” options to fulfill the requirements of the food pyramid, I’d actually be in pretty good shape. But, if I make the wrong choices and eat simple grains, packaged fruit with added sugar, fries as a vegetable, too much red meat and what most people would consider small amounts of oil or sugar, I could easily surpass 3,500 calories in a day. At that caloric intake I could put on 2 pounds a week, even if I was working out daily.
We are fighting a battle that we weren’t given the weapons to win. Without proper nutrition education how can we expect people to know what to eat, how much to eat and how often to eat it? We can tell people to eat right until we are blue in the face but if they don’t know what that really means, how can we expect them to succeed? It’s no wonder obesity rates have soared.
So how does that compare with what kids are being taught now? Check back on Thursday to see if the current food pyramid and nutritional education being taught in our schools and by our government is actually better or just different.
