Mmmm... pyramid

The government has released their new food pyramid, and Raymond Sokalov at OpinionJournal thinks that it's a waste of the $2.5 million they spent on it.

Now, Mad Anthony is an advocate of small government, and likes to see it not tell people what they already know - that they should eat right and get off the damn couch. But I can't get too worked up about it - considering how much the government spends on useless crap, $2.5 million is a drop in the bucket, and some good might come out of it - it is an easy reference for how many calories you should eat, ect. Maybe I'm just channeling PJ O'Rourke on the Stategic Helium Reserve in his book Parliament of Whores: And if you think about it, running the stategic helium reserve is exactly the kind of thing our government should be doing- it's much less expensive and harmful to the nation than most of what they do, plus with any luck they will float away.

Then again, the pyramid is a bit sloppy - it's since been fixed, but at one point they had brown rice listed as a leafy green vegetable.

As entertaining as the OpinionJournal piece is, I'm not so sure about one of Sokolov's claims:
As a mildly overweight retiree, I am as interested in dropping pounds as any other tubby. In fact, I think I know perfectly well already, without a pyramid on my wall, that eating less and exercising more would turn me into an Ashton Kutcher look-alike.

I doubt it. I'm pretty far below retirement age, but I will never look like Ashton Kutcher, and not just because I refuse to wear trucker hats. I'm trying to lose some weight, and I'm hoping to suceed and look a little better, but I don't think Demi Moore is going to start dating me.

On a side note, I got my first "have you lost some weight" comment today from one of my coworkers, the facilities manager at the satellite campus where I work on Saturdays. So maybe I really am starting to lose some weight (I don't trust my $10 Target scale all that much).