The Food Pyramid has been promoted relentlessly by the Department of Agriculture for years, and keeps coming out in different amounts, prescriptions and formats. It's hard to keep up with what they want people to think about how to eat healthy. The newest incarnation is less of a pyramid so much as it is a horizontal line, although they have kept the word and the pyramidal shapes on some of the advertisements. The guidelines have been criticized over the years for prescribing far too much food, and not taking into account individual body weight, gender or age.

If you want guidance on your diet, you should go elsewhere. The pyramid is not even a good guide if you are completely average in size, metabolism and appetite. If most people were to follow the diet guide, they would have to step up their level of physical activity substantially in order to make up for the increased caloric intake. While that generally isn't a bad idea, it helps to take a more measured approach to altering your diet and physical activity level.

The new guide does stress physical activity far more than the old ones, but even so you would do much better to apply individualized analysis to your diet, either through self guidance, diet journaling and increased exercise or by going through a doctor or nutritionist. The amount of calories that a 5'2 woman should be taking in every day is very different from the amount that a 6'3 man should be. There are also different body types to take into account that require differing levels of calories to be sustained in a healthy fashion.