U.S. updates child diet guidelines; consumer group critical.

Government dietary experts, in an effort to combat childhood obesity, last week announced updated guidelines to teach children how to adopt healthful eating habits. The guidelines--a children's version of USDA's recommended food pyramid--target 6- to 11-year-olds with an interactive rocket computer

The pyramid, which took a year to develop, is also a visual depiction of the government's 2005 dietary guidelines, which were released in January. The food industry is largely pleased with the effort, said Bob Earl, senior director of nutrition policy for the Food Products Association, a trade group.

The food industry will attempt to educate children about the new pyramid through a program run by the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA). Teachers will have access to a new curriculum developed by GMA and the Weekly Reader Corporation. The new educational materials will be used by approximately 58,000 educators who reach more than 4 million students in grades 4-6. The Weekly Reader MyPyramid curriculum includes a teacher's guide; math, nutrition and science activities for students; and a bi-lingual parent take-home component in English and Spanish.

GMA also said it would partner with America's Second Harvest--The Nation's Food Bank Network to distribute the MyPyramid curriculum to 1,300 Kids Cafes--afterschool programs that serve free meals to hungry children.

But, like the adult version of the food pyramid, the children's pyramid also drew criticism for not going far enough. Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer-advocacy group based in Washington, said few children will go to the Web site to play the game, and children aren't motivated to avoid junk foods. Instead of conducting a consistent campaign, he said, the government is doing this for a one-time promotion. "My Pyramid for Kids doesn't dare to discourage children from consuming so much soda, fast food, candy, and other junk foods," said Jacobson. "Even if MyPyramid for Kids were terrific, there's no strategy to put materials in every classroom in America--they're actually only making them available upon request. It's as if they've asked Mike Brown to design a response to the obesity epidemic."

CSPI said that if the Administration wanted to reduce the toll of diet-related disease, it could start by aggressively promoting increased consumption of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains; removing soda and junk foods from schools; getting junk-food ads of children's television; and supporting legislation that would put calorie counts on fast-food menu boards. And instead of relying solely on the Internet, the government should take to the airwaves, according to CSPI.

USDA Undersecretary Eric Bost said disseminating the pyramid through cyberspace has proven to be an effective way to reach older consumers, and he predicted it would work well for kids too.

There have been 888 million visits to MyPyramid.gov and MyPyramidtracker.gov since the USDA introduced the two sites in April, Bost said. Nearly half a million people have registered to use the tracker, an interactive site that allows users to record up to a year's worth of food intake and physical activity, he said.

An independent survey by Alexa, a San Francisco-based company that tracks use of Web pages, however, shows a huge peak of usage in April, when the sites were announced, but a steady and significant decline since then. BuzzMetrics, a New York company that conducts opinion polls and monitors Internet traffic on public sites, found that 42 percent of all exchanges about the adult pyramid were negative, 21 percent were mixed and 37 percent were positive.

"The data suggest MyPyramid's impact as a trend-setting diet force is minimal and lacking in credibility," said BuzzMetrics senior analyst Alison Kalis in a company-issued statement. "The reality is that the new food guide is barely a blip on the public conscience."