A Food Guide Kids Can Love

The Agriculture Department on Thursday released a simplified and jazzed up version of the much-used food-guide pyramid in hopes of improving children's eating habits.

Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman, surrounded by more than two dozen pre-schoolers, said the new version is intended for youngsters age two to six.

The nutritional advice does not differ from the original food pyramid. But the new guide features bright colors, graphics of children exercising, foods they like to eat and materials they can understand - for example, simplified food-group names, as well as shortened and single numbers for servings rather than a range of numbers.

For instance, the milk group, from which children are recommended to have two servings daily, has a glass of milk with yogurt, pudding, ice cream and cheese.

The fruit group, from which two servings are also recommended, shows a picture of strawberries, an apple, a fruit cup and a boxed fruit juice.

"The key message of the children's pyramid is variety," Glickman said. "There are no 'good' foods or 'bad' foods. Healthful diets depend on choosing a wide variety of foods of all types: grains, vegetables, fruits, meat and dairy products."

The original food pyramid, released in 1992, has a black background and features terms like "dry beans" and "fats and oils."

The new food pyramid comes at a time when 20 percent of American children are categorized as obese, Glickman said.

"This is kind of nutritional guidelines for kids to follow when they're young, so they can keep going down that road as they get older," Glickman said.

The department hopes companies, many of which now use the original pyramid on cartons of cereal and other foods, also will feature the children's pyramid.

Despite the department's endorsement of the new design, some activists questioned whether the children's pyramid would send the wrong message.

"Indirectly, I think it does recommend hamburgers and ice cream and higher fat by showing them in the pyramid as the ideal diet," said Margo Wooten, senior scientist with the Center for Science in the Public Interest. "Why not clearly mark the milk as 1-percent milk?"