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April 20, 2005
The Mystery of the Food Pyramid: An E-Government Fiasco?
In case you haven't heard, there's been a change at the US Department of Agriculture. No, we don't have a new Agriculture Secretary or an official national vegetable; instead, we've got a new food pyramid.
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The Old Pyramid | The New Pyramid |
While the old pyramid was far from perfect, it was readible. You could look at the pictures of the various foods within each section of the pyramid, and get a sense of what proportion of your diet should be made up of those foods. (Personally, I follow more of a Mediterranean diet than anything else, but that's another blog entry.) There wasn't much to explain with it. We could all quibble over whether it was over-reliant on carbs or whatever, but at least we knew where things stood.
Now, with the new pyramid, it seems that the folks at the USDA have taken a play out of the Department of Homeland Security's book, creating a color-coded pyramid. It's somewhat remiscent of that infamous color-coded security alert symbol; just imagine it being turned on its side and skewed in Photoshop. But the amazing thing about the new pyramid is that it doesn't have any food symbols or text. It's just a pyramid with an uneven rainbow shooting to the top, with the little recycle dude icon pulling a Tenzing Norgay on the left side.
In case you're not thoroughly confused yet, there's actually more than one new pyramid. In fact, there are 12, based on your age and level of activity. In some ways, it's a good thing that they're acknowledging that no one food pyramid could apply to everyone, but having 12 might be seen as overwhelming to some people. Because there are 12 different pyramids, it's no longer possible to print it on cereal boxes or other food packages, unless you just want to show the standard pyramid. Instead, if you'd like to know your perfect pyramid, you're expected to go online to the MyPyramid.gov website, fill out a form, and wait for the website to recommend a pyramid for you. (Interestingly, I've tried it three times today; each time it's hung for about two minutes, then timed out with an error message.)
I truly, truly hope the USDA does more than just this website to educate the public, though. As I've written before in my work on e-government for all, it's poor policymaking to assume that all constituents will have equal access to the Internet or the skills to use it. Therefore, you need to make sure you use alternative offline channels -- TV, radio, print, in-person meetings, etc -- to make government services and information available to the people who need it.
Unfortunately, when you look at various demographic groups, there's a higher likelihood of lower-income, less-educated people to eat a poor diet. Just the audience you'd want to reach in a public health campaign, right? Paradoxically, they're also the ones least likely to have Internet access or Internet skills. This makes it even more important to invest in large-scale offline campaigns to get health-related information directly into their hands.
Meanwhile, don't get me started on Web accessibilty for the disabled. I ran an accessibility test on the homepage and the Inside the Pyramid page, which describes the pyramid in greater detail. Both failed even the most basic accessibility standards; in the case of the homepage, it was because it didn't have alternative text descriptions for all the images on the homepage.
I hope the new pyramid(s) will lead to a healthy - no pun intended - debate in this country over what is a proper diet and what isn't. I just worry that the populations who would benefit the most from this dialogue will be left on the sidelines, eating more Big Macs and other nutritional train wrecks. In the meantime, I'll just sit back, relax, and wait for MyPyramid.gov to tell me which pyramid is the right one for me... -andy
Posted by acarvin at April 20, 2005 1:59 PM
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