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Government Food Pyramid Replaced By Plate

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- Remember the food pyramid? Well, it's history. Welcome "the plate."

The First Lady, Surgeon General and the Agriculture Secretary unveiled the government's new tool to help guide your food choices.

"It seems to look like it's softer, the definite layout of a plate, rather than, it's a little harder to visualize a pyramid when you're eating," says a woman having lunch in Market Square.

"This is open to misinterpretation," says one young man pointing to the old "pyramid." He refers to the new plate, "This being one-fourth, you can see there's four [food groups]."

"I would try to eat more vegetables, fruits, grains, and stuff," says one young woman, based on the plate layout. "And limit the protein and the dairy, because the dairy is the smallest of all of them."

The new, easier to understand icon is a plate split into four sections, varying in size depending on the portion of each food you should eat.

"We eat off of a plate, so it's something that you can kind of visualize better by whether you're in a restaurant or at home, how your plate is set up. So I think it is a good diagram to use," says Laura Cordero, a dietician at St. Clair Hospital.

Basically, the diagram shows that fruits and vegetables should make up half of every meal. For grains, choose whole grains and for dairy go with skim or low-fat milk products.

Other recommendations include looking for lower sodium in foods like soup, bread and frozen meals. Also, pick water over sugary drinks.

If you go to MyPlate.gov, you can look at it online and click on each section of the plate for more information.

To see how people are putting this into action, the USDA wants everyone to take pictures and share them, using the #MyPlate hash tag on Twitter.

But will this really change the eating habits?

"Portion control is the biggest thing to get across," adds Cordero.

RELATED LINKS
More Health News
More Reports By Dr. Maria Simbra
USDA: ChooseMyPlate.gov

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