Some people already have beef with the new food pyramid introduced by the government Tuesday.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's new nutrition guide, MyPyramid, replaced the Food Guide Pyramid, which had been the apple of nutritionists' eyes since 1992.

John Webster, spokesman for the department's Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, said the change occurred to better align nutritional advice with new medical findings and recommendations.

"The science has changed since 1992," he said. "We wanted to see if we could come up with a better image and message moving people toward healthy eating."

But not everything about the new pyramid is sugar and spice, according to some consumer and health advocate groups. Jeff Cronin, spokesman for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said the changes actually make getting nutrition information more difficult.

"The specific problem with the new design is that it doesn't communicate what kinds of foods Americans should be eating more or less of," Cronin said. "I keep looking at the red stripe and wondering if it's meat."

In fact, the red stripe represents fruit. Purple signifies meat and beans, orange implies grains, green denotes vegetables, blue means milk and yellow stands for "oils and discretionary calories," according to MyPyramid.gov.

The new food pyramid is actually 12 pyramids. On the Web site, people are asked to enter their age, sex and typical amount of daily exercise. The site then generates the pyramid most appropriate for them.

"This makes it much easier for people to get more personal information for themselves and the lives they lead," Webster said.

Also new to the food pyramid is the image of a person climbing steps on its side. Webster said this was added to emphasize the importance of physical activity as a part of health.

Although some groups have already expressed dislike for MyPyramid, others seem to be going bananas for it. The new pyramid's Web site received 48 million hits within the first 24 hours it was running, according to Webster.

"People are definitely interested," he said.

But others interested may find the new pyramid a hard nut to crack. Barbara Troy, adjunct assistant professor of biomedical sciences and a nutrition expert, said people who do not have access to computers will need to work harder to use MyPyramid.

"You're going to get the most out of it if you have access to a computer," she said. "A lot of people who need it, don't."

For those who have access to a computer, though, Troy said the new pyramid will be better than the old one because it provides more information. She said college students, who are generally more computer savvy, will likely benefit more from MyPyramid than the Food Guide Pyramid.

"For the rest of the population, it's an interesting question," Troy said.

Cronin said the best way to juice up the pyramid for the general population would be to cut it into three sections with a small portion of fatty foods on the top, a bigger portion of nutritional foods in the middle and the biggest portion of healthiest foods on the bottom.

"Right there, that would've been 10 times better," Cronin said. "They're making it more complicated than it needs to be."

But it could just take time to adjust to the new pyramid.

"The old one is more effective in that people are used to it," said Jen Beio, sophomore in the College of Communication. "As people get used to it, I think the new one will be more effective."

This article appeared in The Marquette Tribune on April 26 2005.