How many people know what the Food Guide Pyramid is? The Department of Agriculture’s graphic guide to the important food groups and a balanced diet has been extensively shown and written about in newspapers and magazines. But new studies show a discouraging lack of awareness on the part of kids and adults.
A recent Gallup survey of American children, ages 9 to 15, showed that only about half even know the Food Guide Pyramid exists.
Of that half about three-quarters can name either the meat/poultry/fish or the bread/cereal/grain food group. Only 10 percent could name the fats and sugar group.
That is disappointing, given the large amount of governmental, media and educational focus on the pyramid and the new Nutrition Facts labels. But it’s better than how adults responded to a similar question in a survey taken in November 1993, one year before the children’s poll. Only 30 percent of the adults knew about the pyramid.
“So maybe we should be encouraged,” says Molly Natchipolsky, trying to put a positive spin on things. Natchipolsky is the program manager for the International Food Information Council, which sponsored the survey with the American Dietetic Association and the President’s Council on Physical Fitness.
The Gallup telephone surveyors gathered responses on food and physical activity by talking to a national cross-section of 410 young people.
Though the results weren’t dramatic, they did confirm some trends while reinforcing older assumptions.
Among the assumptions was that when it comes to eating, nutrition and physical activity, children emulate and learn from the adults in their lives. This comes despite constant reports that youngsters are setting their own pace.
For instance, asked to rate their own eating, 64 percent of the kids said they had good or excellent habits. At the same time, 76 percent of them said their parents’ eating habits were good or excellent.
“The thing that pops out is that they are relying on adults to set examples,” Natchipolsky says. This is more evident when you ask where they get nutrition information. About 90 percent mention teachers, 77 percent say parents and 64 percent list television.
But parents also may figure heavily in the number of meals kids skip.
Nobody expects kids to eat breakfast every morning. That hasn’t been a tradition since Beaver Cleaver started high school. But about a third of the kids say they skip breakfast two or more times a week.
“That’s a larger number than we’ve ever seen,” says Doris Derelian, president of the American Dietetic Association. “Skipping breakfast is the single most common self-imposed behavior women use for weight control, and it is horribly ineffective. And if women are doing it, you know it is spreading to their kids.”
There’s more bad news. About 18 percent of the youngsters say they skip dinner at least once a week.
“When you miss an evening meal, you often don’t get a hunger call until later when the only alternatives are to graze,” Derelian says. “So you look in the refrigerator for something with calories or run out to the 7-Eleven. In either case it’s usually not a nutritious substitute for a formal meal.”
The survey found that 80 percent of kids say they realize the value of physical activity, but only half say they pursue some vigorous activity for any length of time on a regular basis. And just 3 in 10 understand that maintaining fitness and health is a prime reason for being physically active.
In analyzing the results and talking to poll participants, Derelian says she realizes that kids still do not understand that nutrition and physical fitness are interrelated. “They don’t see that getting energy and utilizing it (in muscles) are linked,” she says.
“That’s our fault. Professionally, dietitians are different than coaches or trainers. But when it comes to public messages we need to show the fields are closely related,” she says.
Youngsters still believe that foods that are good for you don’t taste good (64 percent agreed with that statement). “Certainly the marketplace is filled with modified foods, and people are buying them and eating them,” Derelian says.
Or maybe they are simply echoing what their parents say, she says. As adults have responded in several surveys, the kids in the poll also say they are getting tired of being told what foods are good and bad for you.
What it all means is that more attention needs to be paid to nutrition education as well as to physical activity, Derelian says. With the proposed revisions in the school lunch program and constant trims in physical education budgets, formal school programs may not help enough, she says.
Perhaps adults–parents and teachers in particular–need to realize they are being watched by young eyes.
