A Healthy Pyramid Scheme

Isosceles triangle: the perfect shape for nearly every body type

The Food Pyramid in its initial shape, circa 1974

Now that the sugar rush of Halloween is over, the holiday competitive eating marathons are about to commence around the country.  Hopes of fitting into a little black dress come New Year's Eve may be plummeting as quickly as back accounts on Black Friday.  So what can a fellow do to ensure a swimmer's V body, or for a gal, an hourglass shape?  Why, think triangle, of course.

For twenty years, the US has been advocating nutrition via its Food Pyramid.  And here's how it all started: 

Amid high food prices in 1972, Sweden's National Board of Health and Welfare developed the idea of "basic foods" that were both cheap and nutritious, and "supplemental foods" that added nutrition missing from the basic foods. Anna Britt Agnsäter, head of the test kitchen at KF, a consumer co-op that worked with the Board, held a lecture the next year on how to illustrate these food groups. Attendee Fjalar Clemes suggested a triangle displaying basic foods at the base. Agnsäter developed the idea into the first food pyramid, which was introduced to the public in 1974 in KF's Vi magazine. The pyramid was divided into basic foods at the base, including milk, cheese, margarine, bread, cereals and potatoes; a large section of supplemental vegetables and fruit; and an apex of supplemental meat, fish and eggs. The pyramid competed with the National Board's "dietary circle," which KF saw as problematic for resembling a cake divided into seven slices, and for not indicating how much of each food should be eaten. While the Board distanced itself from the pyramid, KF continued to promote it, and food pyramids were developed in other Scandinaviancountries, as well as West Germany, Japan and Sri Lanka. The United States later developed its first food pyramid in 1992. In general terms, the food guide pyramid recommends the following intake of different food groups each day, although exact amounts of calorie intake depends on sex, age, and lifestyle. 

The 1992 US pyramid

The World Health Organization, in conjunction with the Food and Agriculture Organization, published guidelines that can effectively be represented in a food pyramid relating to objectives to prevent obesity, chronic diseases and dental caries based on meta-analysis though they represent it as a table rather than a "pyramid". The structure is similar in some respects to the USDA food pyramid, but there are clear distinctions between types of fats, and a more dramatic distinction where carbohydrates are split on the basis of free sugars versus sugars in their natural form. Some food substances are singled out due to the impact on the target issues the "pyramid" is meant to address, while in a later revision, some recommendations are omitted since they follow automatically from other recommendations while other sub-categories are added. The reports quoted here explain that where there is no stated lower limit in the table below, there is no requirement for that nutrient in the diet. [source: Wikipedia]

Even with the temptations of the holidays, the triangle can stave off the holiday overeating blahs, and make for a very happy new year.