Food pyramid scheme

Sandy Swarc, at Tech Central Station, observes that the calorie allowances under the new food pyramid are rather minimal.

In simplifying the Dietary Guidelines for us, MyPyramid claims to give us our own "personalized" calorie recommendations after we enter our age, gender and activity level at the website. We should rightly expect that its calorie recommendations would be the same as those from the [USDA]Dietary Guidelines. But they don't match up at all. The differences are alarming.

The MyPyramid calorie allotments for adults aged 31-60, who are active for one hour per day, are lower than the USDA dietary guidelines. The discrepency is 24% for men, and 49% for women.

For adults over age 60, the discrepency is 62% for men, and 70% for women.

MyPyramid accentuates the calorie shortfalls by being one-size-fits-all and gender biased and misleading us to underestimate our physical activity. Unlike the Dietary Guidelines, MyPyramid disregards height and weight, assuming everyone of a certain age, gender and activity level needs the same number of calories. That's not scientifically sound.