Last week, we heard the first rumblings that President Obama and his healthy-eatin' wife Michelle were developing a new logo to replace the classic food pyramid that's been kicking around since 1992. Today, that new logo was officially revealed! As you can see here, it does indeed "call to mind a painting by the artist Mark Rothko," as one unidentified source told the Times before it was released. Stare at it for long enough, and you might get lost in the profound depths of its mysterious, transcendental abstractions!
The newfangled "nutrition plate" has big blocks of color (how very "Orange & Yellow") split into sections for vegetables, fruits, protein, and grains, with a circular blob (a cup?) floating off to the right for dairy. The new plate, which encourages eaters to fill half of their plate with fruits and vegetables, is the fist part of a multi-step healthy eating campaign, with later steps focusing on cutting down portion sizes and sugary drinks.
The pyramid of days past was criticized as misleading and hard to understand, and this new one could go either way: Marion Nestle, a nutrition professor at NYU, likes the simplicity of the plate but said that labeling a large section "protein" was confusing, since grains and dairy can also provide protein. She also added, "It’s better than the pyramid but that’s not saying a lot."
