If Kids Designed the Food Pyramid

On a similar theme - how about a food pyramid that is genuinely healthy instead of the current one for which the evidence is somewhat thin...

Harvard School of Public Health Food Pyramid

That's hilarious.. and truly sad all at the same time!

It really depends on how kids are raised. I know as a kid, I would have put my grandmother's home grown veggies at the base of the pyramid. They were so incredibly delicious, I could not eat enough of them.

Soda, pizza and cake were for those rare occasions when we went out to eat for someone's birthday. I enjoyed them, but did not think much about them once I was back home.

Of course, the world is a bit different now. Veggies in the grocery store are stripped of their nutrients in order to last longer on the shelves, thus they taste incredibly bland. Processed foods are manufactured to stimulate our taste buds with salt, fats and HFCS.

It's no wonder children want to eat crappy food when the "healthy" foods have no flavor.

I think it's cute. Kids will be kids.

I think it is pretty funny. In my opinion eating junk food is ok for kids as to some degree kids need to be kids. It is showing children a balanced diet and moderation is what is most important and leading by example.

When I was a kid, we didn't get a lot of processed junk food, but we DID get homemade treats like homemade chocolate pudding and oatmeal cookies. One of my favorite things on my "food pyramid" growing up would have been homemade pizza using whole wheat flour for the crust and topped with tons of fresh veggies from the garden and no meat. I don't think it's a great idea to ban junk food in your house, but you can let your kids have decent treats that won't completely deprive them. I remember visiting my grandma, who fed us nothing BUT junk, and craving fruit and veggies after a day or two. So yeah, it SOUNDS like a good plan, but if you actually eat nothing but junk for a while, it gets really old really fast.

The above pyramid really only reflects what too many children are offered daily - from school lunches, to restaurant "kids menus", to quick and convenient options offered at home.

Sadly, chicken nuggets, fries, pizza, burgers, hot dogs, mac & cheese, etc. are all that seem to be even considered for kids these days....that's one reason I prepare almost all of our meals at home and why, when we do eat out, we do not order off the kid's menu for our son....instead we share off our plates since they're usually way too much for any one person to actually finish anyway!

Regina, I don't even know why these places bother having kids menus since they all have exactly the same things anyway! Hamburger, small pizza, hotdog, mac and cheese, all with fries, I get the drill. When we go to a restaurant with our kids, we split meals between the two of them, or they order something small like their favorite soup, or they share with us-that's a good way to eat less of the ridiculous portions they often serve anyway, and learning about portion sizes is important alongside learning what foods to eat.

In the summer there is a steak place near our cottage we go to every month or so and the portions are huge -however we go there and order the full deal with a lean cut of meat and the salad bar since it's not much more in price than the salad bar alone - then we eat the salad bar at the restaurant and take the meat home and I make something out of it in the crockpot the next day.

However I think that this comic food pyramid is meant to be a representation of what kids would like to eat, not what they necessarily do. My kids for sure would want the pizza on there, and probably chips, and it seems to be missing big bowls of ice cream! But they would also have spinach and sushi and garden peas and carrots on there too - not because they are healthier, but because those are also among their favorites.

It deeply disturbs me -- what kids are eating. On the one hand we have all the so called health education and on the other, the reality "on the ground."

I dread to think of the consequences when the chicken comes home to roost. ADHD, autism, childhood cancer and diabetes all on the up. Very very disturbing.

The enlightened parents are few and far between in my experience.

~ Mike.

That is funny and sad all at the same time. I think the sweet/junk food manufacturers have a lot to answer for.

Oh COME ON! This is cute, a cartoon, and a joke. You guys are taking it WAY too seriously. There are other things in life than being entirely OCD-to-the-point-of-never-being-able-to-take-a-joke about health food.