On Wed, 10 Mar 2004 15:36, Dori Zook wrote:

>US nutrition policy affects a lot of people who
>can't do much about it.  For example, school
>lunches and military rations must follow the
>USDA food pyramid.  So must food subsidies for
>the indigent....Any publicly funded health
>facilities for the indigent must also
>promote the pyramid.

That creates a huge institutional impediment to change to the USDA food
pyramid.  It also explains why the pyramid lags behind the nutritional
science and seems to support ease of bulk purchasing and mass catering
rather than the health of individuals (see the nutritional analyses of
many slightly different cuts of meat which could be ordered from an
abbattoir, but which cannot be distinguished in a supermarket).

Keith