Food Pyramid 3.5

April 1, 2002

>>>As a followup, the reason that I thought breaking the pyramid into

nutritional needs rather than food types is that it would explain how

many differant diets that all healthy. For example, the masai met

many nutrional needs with cultured dairy: protein, calcium, fat

soluble activators, carbohydrate, and healthy bacteria. But other

cultures did that in a completely differant way. E.g. a hunter-

gatherer society would use bones and cartalige for calcium.

Any thoughts?

*** and I were discussing his food pyramid offlist the other day. I

think it's a handy guide - certainly much better than the government's

pyramid. I mentioned that maybe it could be published in a revision of NT

one day. said it was unlikely since Sally doesn't like using pyramids

because *individual* needs vary so much and pyramids are generally a blanket

recommendation. I agree with that - there should be no *blanket

recommendation* per se, because it simply wouldn't work for everybody.

However, I do think a visual guide that could serve as a *starting point*

with clear notation that it's only to be used as a foundation or jump off

point on which to develop an individualized dietary plan would be a useful

tool. I'm very *visually-oriented* as I know many folks are, and having some

sort of graphic representation whether it's a pyramid or some other

structure really helps me organize my thoughts. I'm not sure what that

structure should be though...

Re the categories you came up with, how about a " super foods " category as

well, such as the one on the WAPF web site? That category would include

things like kelp, bee pollen, high vitamin butter, wheat germ oil, etc?

I couldn't think of a good name for the carbohydrate category either...other

than " energy foods " but the fats that appear in other categories are also

energy foods (as are proteins containing gluconeogenic amino acids, under

the right conditions).

Suze Fisher

Web Design & Development

mailto:s.fisher22@...

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