Pyramid Plan Aims at Curbing Obese Kids

Target: 6 to 11 years

Rocket ship game launches into tips

The federal government on Wednesday unveiled the first “food pyramid” specifically aimed at 6- to 11-year-old children, hoping that sound dietary advice combined with an interactive computer game featuring a rocket ship will help combat the growing obesity epidemic among children.

Released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which issued a revised food pyramid for adults earlier this year, the new pyramid underscores familiar nutritional and physical activity messages.

Familiar messages

Eat fruit, veggies

Got calcium?: It urges kids to fill up on fruit and vegetables, grab whole grains instead of more processed cereals, bread and pasta and to “get your calcium-rich foods,” such as milk.

Beans, nuts for protein: Youngsters are advised to pick up protein – not the greasy fast-food burgers, fatty hot dogs and deep- fried chicken nuggets that are often a staple of children’s diets – but rather beans, nuts and sunflower seeds as well as lean meat, poultry without the skin and seafood.

Lofty physical goal: Physical activity is another key part of the children’s pyramid, just as it is for the adult pyramid. Youngsters, however, are advised to get at least 60 minutes daily of activity – a goal that few children now meet.

Diet of criticism

Starved for ‘guts’

Like My Pyramid ( www.mypyramid.gov ) and My Pyramid Tracker ( www.mypyramidtracker.gov ), the new pyramid for children is largely Web-based – a fact that drew criticism when the revised adult pyramid was released in April.

“A lost opportunity,” is how Walter Willett, a Harvard School of Public Health professor of nutrition, described it, saying that “only the very most motivated people will go to the Web and dig into this information.”

“The materials don’t even have the guts to urge kids to drink less soda pop, to eat less candy,” said Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Science in the Public Interest.

“If the government really wanted to improve kids’ eating habits, it would get junk food out of schools, it would ban junk food advertising on television, it would require calorie counts on fast- food menu boards and sponsor hard-hitting educational materials,” he said. “That would really drive home the point that these empty- calorie foods are causing obesity.”

At the same time, a food industry group created a separate kids’ pyramid in a partnership with the Weekly Reader newspaper that distributed a curriculum to 58,000 classrooms just this week. The group, Grocery Manufacturers of America, said its pyramid was based on the same pyramid for adults but that there was no coordination with the government.

“We saw it as an opportunity for GMA to help promote USDA’s nutritional message,” GMA spokeswoman Stephanie Childs said.

Sources: Associated Press, Washington Post, www.mypyramid.gov.