Showing posts with label USDA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label USDA. Show all posts

August 15, 2012

That's The Last Straw

Our daughters and granddaughters are special. 

They deserve to be protected from sexual predators, such as those that spike drinks and take advantage of their unknowing victims. 

I was so pleased to learn about a new Anti-Date Rape Straw to help prevent this. 

The straw developed by Israeli inventors tests drinks for common date rape drugs. 

If the dangerous drugs are present, then the straw changes colors or becomes cloudy--providing a crucial early warning sign to those who might otherwise be drugged and sexually assaulted. 

We now have greater awareness of the prevalence of sexual abuse, especially by people we know and trust--such as dating partners, sports coaches, teachers, and even clergy--so we must remain ever vigilant.

We need to teach our daughters that they are beautiful and special and to protect themselves--and not to think that "it can't happen to me."

With these special straws, our daughters can be better prepared, aware, and hopefully safer.

I can see the potential growth and application of this technology to protecting government and private sector leaders, dignitaries, and other VIPs from potentially ingesting--intentionally- or accidentally-tainted food or drink. 

With a straw, eating utensil, or even toothpick like device that tests for the presence of dangerous pathogens and contaminants, we can provide a critical safeguard and prevent eating and drinking harmful elements. 

Potentially, these types of devices--maybe connected to an smartphone--could be used to provide other important measures and readings of food--such as ingredients, nutrition, and calories--of the actual servings we are about to eat.

This technology has incredible potential to help us not only eat safer, but also healthier. 

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

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June 3, 2011

Describing Meal Time

The USDA released their new dietary guidelines yesterday (2 June).

And while there is no surprise in the recommendations that we eat more fruits and vegetables; what was refreshing was the new imagery for conveying the information.

Gone is the Food Pyramid and in is the Food Plate.
This new visualization overall makes a lot more sense since:

1) As the Wall Street Journal stated today (3 June 2011), "People don't eat off a pyramid, they eat off a plate." In other words, this is something we can relate to at meal times.

2) The plate here is used like a pie chart to easily show what portion of our meals should come from each food category. For example, you can clearly see that fruits and veggies makes up a full half of the plate. (Boy, I'm sure there are a lot of smiling moms and dads out there today, saying I told you so!) Also the role of protein in a healthy diet is reaffirmed with almost a full quadrant itself.
I am not sure why this initiative, according to the WSJ, cost about $2.9 million and three years to accomplish, since the representation seems fairly straight forward (unless some of that went to modifying the nutritional guidelines themselves).

In any case, I think we can all be glad they got rid of the 2005 version of the food pyramid that "left many baffled" as to what they were trying to say.

Still even in this new visualization, there are confusing aspects, for example:

1) Greater than a Pie--The Dairy piece is separate and off to the right of the plate. I would imagine that this is supposed to represent something like a glass of milk, but it is odd in this picture, since it takes away from the pie chart presentation of the plate where theoretically all the food groups on the "pie plate" would add up to 100%. Here, however, the Dairy plate (or glass) is off to the side, so we have something like 120% total--confusing!

2) Missing Percentages--The actual recommended percentages are not noted in the diagram. This type of information had previously been provided in the 1992 Food Pyramid through the recommended servings. Where did they go? I would suggest they annotate the pie slices for each food group with the actual recommended percentages, so that we have the imagery of the slices, but also have a target number to go with. Helpful, if you are counting your calories (and food types) on a diet.

In short, information visualization can be as important as the information itself--with information, having quality data is critical or else you have "garbage in, garbage out." Similarly, with information visualization, you can take perfectly good information and portray it poorly and confuse the heck out of folks--in essence making the resulting information into potential garbage again.

This is why efforts such as the Choose MyPlate are important to help us communicate important information effectively to people, in this case so they can eat and live healthier lives.
I think the new Food Plate is generally effective at presenting the information and I support this effort wholly, but I'm still looking forward to version 3.1.

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