Computerized calorie plan builds on government's food pyramid

WASHINGTON (AP) _ The government's Food Guide Pyramid cannot cover everyone, so federal dietary planners want people to build their own version. <br><br>The Agriculture Department office that manages

Monday, February 16th 2004, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

WASHINGTON (AP) _ The government's Food Guide Pyramid cannot cover everyone, so federal dietary planners want people to build their own version.

The Agriculture Department office that manages the pyramid is fitting its Web site to help people tailor individual programs for diet and exercise as part of a food guide policy that will offer more room for variation.

``The Food Guide Pyramid was viewed as being for everybody, but it wasn't related to the individual,'' said Eric Hentges, executive director of the department's Center for Nutrition Policy and Health Promotion. ``If people wanted to make a change, they didn't see how they could use our food guidance to make the change.''

As federal officials and scientific advisers update the government's dietary guidance, including the pyramid, they plan to work the Web site into the update. Hentges said the aim is to custom-fit guidance on food and physical activity.

The Interactive Healthy Eating Index offers such guidance in fine detail. For instance, entering coffee at the site produces a menu of 57 choices including coffee, ground, and coffee, Cuban, sweetened espresso as well as Little Debbie Apple Streusel Coffee Cake.

The program prompts users to list how many times a day they had that coffee or coffee cake, and the size of the servings. A diligent user going through the database can list everything consumed every day.

The payoff is a running balance on calories, carbohydrates, proteins and specific nutrients such as vitamin A.

The index ties into federal food guides, comparing a specific food item or a day's dining with what the pyramid recommends. It also rates how successful the user is in meeting the healthy eating recommendations.

The gauge is more exact than the current pyramid, which simplifies calorie choices into three levels. Inactive women and older adults might need only 1,600 calories a day, while active women and many sedentary men might require 2,200, and physically active teenagers might chew through 2,800. Based on that, a person might eat from six serving to 11 servings of grain a day.

The pyramid does not advise people how much to work out. In contrast, a physical activity tool on the Web site has about 600 choices.

Users can choose how hard they work; runners might charge ahead at 6.5 minutes per mile or jog at 12 minutes per mile. By listing their daily activities and the time they spend on them, people can add up the calories they work off just as they add the calories they consume.

The program also lets people compare their daily activities with federal targets for physical activity. For adults, the target is at least 30 minutes a day on most days of the week; younger people ought to do at least 60 minutes.

The government has increased its emphasis on exercise, but the addition of physical activity to the food mix will be a big change. Two members of an advisory committee working on revising the dietary guidelines said the result will bring more balance to the federal focus on calories.

``I hope this version of the guidelines will take a step toward drawing the two together: energy expenditure and energy intake,'' said Russell R. Pate, associate dean for research at the University of South Carolina.

Added Dr. F. Xavier Pi-Sunyer, director of the Obesity Research Center at the Columbia University Medical School: ``It's pretty difficult to regulate intake if you don't do physical activity.''

How the new guidelines will look is uncertain. One proposal calls for 12 different levels of recommended calories. That may be too complicated for what is supposed to be an easy-to-grasp graphic, which is supposed to be released in the winter of 2005.