WHOA, has that ever changed! MyPyramid.gov is now an extensive nutrition website for general reference or detailed study. It’s a basis for a term paper, a great subject for a health talk by and/or to anyone from 12 to 102, a basis on which a new spouse or parent – or anyone venturing into the real world from home – could develop a lifetime of good eating habits. Why, it could even be the basis of a health & fitness column.

MyPyramid.gov is derived from the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2005 at http://www.healthierus.gov/dietaryguidelines/ (we’ll just call it Guidelines), which is produced every five years by a broad, heavyweight team of nutrition experts. Their website includes links to their huge Guidelines report, to a still-hefty Executive Summary of Guidelines, to MyPyramid.gov, and to many more nutrition and health sites. (A timely warning: MyPyramid.org is a clever but hypercritical spoof on MyPyramid.gov. The sites look almost identical, so watch your web tracks closely. That said, we’ll call MyPyramid.gov just MyPyramid henceforth.)

We’ve used the pyramid’s basic nutritional concepts here for years; let’s concentrate this month on the pros and cons of the new MyPyramid website itself. Everyone who reads and eats should check out MyPyramid, and everyone responsible for their own or another’s diet should be intimately familiar with it. It looks a lot like the very few diets repeatedly proven to extend both the length and the quality of our lives (and looks like the anti-Atkins incarnate.)

Like any good website, MyPyramid presents nutrition at a level most users can understand, then links us to increasing levels of detail in any relevant direction we choose. This concept is an excellent reason to have a computer in the kitchen, where a solo or family food manager could manage overall diets, plan meals, generate shopping lists . . . even track pantry inventory if they were really obsessed with details. This could save time, save money, improve family health, put a bored kid to good use, and maybe encourage kids to use sound health practices throughout their lives and/or in their careers.

Just following your clicker can take your family nutrition manager to topics ranging from “Feel better today; stay healthier for tomorrow” to “Genetic Analysis of the Chiari I Malformation”. Somewhere between those extremes is a practical font of knowledge all of us can use as a starting point. Most generally healthy people could manage their health, tastes, nutrition, weight, and eating habits almost from this one site, and ignore fad diets. Who’da thunk the government could do something this right for a change? The new USDA food pyramid: it’s what’s for dinner.

But notice we’re only half way through. There’s a flip side to this song, another shoe to drop, a reality check of the familiar mantra, “We’re from the government; we’re here to help you.” i.e., Hold on to your hats: MyPyramid has critics.