Aguilera attempted to make up for it by combining two lines — “What so proudly we watched,” instead of “What so proudly we hailed”, like that was going to help but it was too late to spin the error. Twitter exploded, and all Aguilera could do was to over-sing every word from there on out, which she did.

Christina is really a great singer but why can’t these highly paid professionals just sing it straight through the way it was written? No fancy crap! One spectator commented by saying “She sang it like she was milking a cow”!

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The food pyramid was designed to offer an easy-to-understand look at healthy eating, but for the average person it’s too simplistic, vague, and sometimes way off.  Here’s how food pyramids work and how you can actually use them in your day-to-day eating.

Versions of the Food Guide Pyramid have been around since the late 70s, and an official U.S. Department of Agriculture version rose to common knowledge in 1992, but it’s long been the focus of some controversy, with several updates and alternatives offered over the last decade. Here’s a quick look at the history of the food pyramid and its goals, followed by some tips for how you can actually use it for better eating.

A Little Food Pyramid History

The Original Food Pyramid and Its Problems

(Click to enlarge.)

Above is an image of the original USDA food pyramid, familiar to so many from grade school. The bottom of the pyramid is the carbohydrate group, recommending 6-11 servings per day—an aspect heavily attacked by modern nutritionists. On the next level up, we have the vegetable group on the left (3-5 servings per day) and the fruit group on the right (2-4 servings per day). The penultimate level consists of the dairy group on the left (2-3 servings per day) and the protein group on the right (2-3 servings per day). All the way up top is the fat group, which you’re supposed to avoid whenever possible. The goal of the original food pyramid was to suggest a healthy diet that would be easy for anyone to follow. Here’s an example of three full meals and how they’d stack up on this food pyramid:

• Breakfast: A bowl of cereal with milk, an apple or banana, and two pieces of toast with butter (1 serving of dairy, 1 serving of fruit, 2 servings of carbs, and little fat).
• Lunch: A lean turkey sandwich with cheese, some cut carrots and celery, a bag of mixed nuts, and a plum (2 servings of protein, 1 serving of dairy, 1 serving of carbs, 1 serving of vegetables, and 1 serving of fruit).
• Dinner: Grilled chicken, peas and carrots, salad, and a slice of zucchini bread (1 serving of protein, 2 servings of vegetables, and 1 serving of carbs).

In total that gets you:

• Carbs: 4 servings
• Fruits: 2 servings
• Vegetables: 3 servings
• Dairy: 2 servings
• Protein: 3 servings of protein

This is where you start to see some problems. With this amount of food in a single day, you’d have no trouble getting six servings-worth of carbohydrates. Nonetheless, it only works out to four servings, which is two under the minimum. (More on this later.) On the other side of the equation, this set of meals shows the correct number of servings of protein, but doesn’t account for the additional protein you get through dairy (for example). It doesn’t account for all sorts of things, like the high carbohydrate content found in beans or all the dairy that sneaks its way into so many foods and sauces, homemade or manufactured. It also doesn’t account for many important variables, such as your sex, your height and healthy weight, your daily activity, how different bodies have easier or harder times processing certain foods, and more. The original food pyramid was a nice thought, and it’s not way off, but it’s definitely not a sufficient tool for anybody’s diet.

The New Food Pyramids

Original Comic

The food pyramid has undergone quite a few revisions since it was created, both official and third-party, but we’re going to look at the two most notable.

(Click to enlarge.)

In April 2005, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) decided to update the food guide pyramid with what you see above. If the original food pyramid felt slightly confusing and incomplete, you now have a fully fledged diet puzzle. This food guide pyramid is actually pretty much the same as the old one, except it’s harder to read. You’ll notice the different colored sections are not all the same size, and that’s because they imply how much each category should make up your daily diet. You’ll see that grains/carbohydrates still make up the largest section and fats make up the smallest (the yellow section, which is very easy to miss).

This pyramid revision is not so much about what’s changed, however, but more about what’s been added. The figure climbing the steps was designed to represent the physical activity necessary to healthy living. Each category also gets a little more specific, such as the grains category suggesting that at least 50% of all grain intake consist of whole grains. Wikipedia offers a full overview of each category. While the graphic, itself, isn’t terribly informative, the descriptions paired with it are (and they’re a little more up-to-date).

The Problems: Here’s where things continue to be problematic. We’ll start with carbohydrates as an example. The USDA food pyramid is based on a 2,000 calorie (per day) diet and recommends about half of those calories come from carbs. (Technically it’s 45-65% for adults, but we’re going with an even 50% for ease of illustration.) The USDA’s daily recommended intake (DRI) of carbohydrates is 130 grams, but if you have about 1,000 daily calories coming from carbohydrates (per day) you’re looking at more along the lines of 250 grams of carbohydrates (1 gram of carbs = 4 calories). Diets recommending lower carb intake generally suggest 80 grams of carbohydrates per day, so some believe that even the lower figure of 130 grams is a bit high. The amount of discussion over this particular figure isn’t so much to suggest that the food pyramid is wrong for everyone, but that a person’s particular needs can vary based on a lot of factors. It’s hard to put stock in something designed to represent everybody in a large, diverse country.

(Click to enlarge.)

In January of 2003, Scientific American published Rebuilding the Food Pyramid, by Walter C. Willett and Meir J. Stampfer. It was intended to separate the food groups into more accurate categories and make better recommendations for healthier eating based on scientific research. Here’s the basic breakdown:

1. Red meat and butter: USE SPARINGLY
2. White rice, white bread, potatoes, pasta and sweets: USE SPARINGLY
3. Dairy or calcium supplement: 1 TO 2 SERVINGS
4. Fish, poultry and eggs: 0 TO 2 SERVINGS
5. Nuts and legumes: 1 TO 3 SERVINGS
6. Vegetables: IN ABUNDANCE
7. Fruit: 2 TO 3 SERVINGS
8. Whole-grain foods: AT MOST MEALS
9. Plant oils (olive, canola, soy, corn, sunflower, peanut and other vegetable oils): AT MOST MEALS

Also suggested: “Vitamins for most and alcohol in moderation (unless contraindicated).”

What’s important in this revision is that it distinguishes between types of foods that were previously in the same groupings, but could have very different effects on a person’s diet. For example, white grains are now separated from whole grains, as current findings point to whole grains as the healthier option (but when buying whole wheat, be sure you know what you’re getting). This probably isn’t new information to most people reading this, but it’s of concern when this information is neglected from the official USDA food pyramid.

How to Actually Use a Food Pyramid

The biggest fault of any food pyramid, like any set of diet and health guidelines, is that everybody is different, and encounters different eating experiences throughout their day. There are enough similarities to make some general recommendations, but acting on any of those recommendations without factoring in your own specific needs is not the best course of action. Here’s how to take the information you find in a food pyramid (preferably the rebuilt pyramid previously mentioned) and actually use it for better eating.

Focus on Simple Foods

You don’t have to take up a macrobiotic diet to do real tracking of your intake, but when you’re considering what you eat, you should still consider its parts, rather than the whole.

Food pyramids break up macronutrients into more specific categories. Problem is, you don’t necessarily eat a whole zucchini as part of your meal. Take a turkey sandwich, for example. Eating one of those could end up giving you a serving of protein (the turkey), a serving of dairy (a piece of cheese), and a serving (or more) of carbohydrates (the bread), but it also varies if you’re swapping contents and toppings in and out.

If you’re cooking, try to stay on top of everything that goes into that particular dish. It’ll help you know the impact on your body once you eat it, but it’ll also help you understand what can be added or subtracted to make the meal healthier. While you don’t necessarily want to give up cooking, uncooked and unprocessed whole foods can make a great contribution to a healthier diet.

Understand the Pros and Cons of Each Food

When choosing foods you want to eat, you’re never going to know the full list of nutrients it can be provide. You can, however, get to know the main pros and cons of certain foods. For example, plums are high in fiber, and black beans are high in protein and carbohydrates. A burrito is a good real-world example of why this information is important.

Let’s say you’re building a burrito and you’re deciding what to put inside. You start with a tortilla, add beans, and then add rice (among other potential ingredients). Every one of those items provides a significant number of carbohydrates. Using Chipotle as an example, those three items would provide you with 90 grams of carbohydrates. That’s not an unreasonable amount for a single day, but it’s a lot for a single meal. Knowing which foods are good sources of which nutrients can help you make better decisions when choosing your servings. The food pyramid can be a good guide for choosing those servings, but when you start to get specific you need to know when a food counts as a serving outside of its main category as well.

Factor In Your Body

Original Comic at Toothpaste for Dinner

Your daily calorie intake depends on more factors than being human, but that’s basically all the food pyramids assume. When you’re figuring out how much you need to eat each day to maintain a balanced diet, you should factor in your age, sex, height, weight, level of exercise, and whether or not fat loss is a goal.

Safe diets aren’t always as simple as just reducing calories, and you should consult a doctor before making any extreme decisions about your diet, but there are a lot of ways to find out how to determine your daily calorie intake using those factors. FreeDieting.com provides a handy calorie calculator that makes suggestions on how many calories you should consume per day. It’s good to have your particular needs in mind when you figure out how the serving suggestions on the food pyramid apply to you.

Factor In Your Problems

In theory we digest and process food in the same ways, but a lot of us have allergies and dietary restrictions. Whether your restrictions are voluntary or not, you probably have to substitute a normal item you find on the food group pyramid for something else. It’s important to remember that substitutes can have a major difference in nutritional value and to know what those differences are.

Let’s take lactose intolerance and milk as an example. If you’re replacing milk, your most obvious choices are soy milk and rice milk. Rice milk has significantly higher levels of carbohydrates than regular milk and soy milk often has a lot of sugar added (not always the case, but it’s always worth checking first). If you don’t eat meat and are looking at substitutes, many of them have a very high sodium content that you wouldn’t find in actual meat. This isn’t necessarily worse, just different. It’s important to be aware of the differences in substitutions and not assume you’re getting the exact same nutrients you’ll find in the item it was designed to replace.

This post originally appeared on Lifehacker.com

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Cummings Lights A Fire For the US Maritime Industry

The US Merchant Marine (USMM) has been an integral factor in building a secure and wealthy nation since its birth. But, it has fallen on hard times since the 1970s due to weak government policies. In fact, today’s maritime policies and funding are pathetic at best as the US government continues to dump billions upon billions into broken highway systems that are constantly in need of maintenance while the maritime industry gets next to nothing in support. However, the USMM has a real champion in Representative Elijah Cummings (MD-07), who grilled MARAD’s administrator David Masuda at a hearing yesterday, challenging his knowledge and leadership of the industry’s most vital link to the administration.

One of the issues that had Cummings hot under the collar is the Department of Energy’s (DOE) guaranteed loan program, which snubs its nose at the Cargo Preference laws. DOE is authorized to provide up to $4 billion in guaranteed loans for energy related projects, including wind farms, renewable energy, and other energy related projects. Yet, it denies US carriers access to transport cargos derived from these loans.

Beyond the Maritime Security Program (MSP), Cargo Preference is the life-blood of US operators. In 2007, preference cargoes accounted for 49.6 percent of all cargo carried by US flagged operators. In 2007, cargo preference provided US operators $919.4 million for military cargo, $319.8 million for agricultural cargo, and $113.4 million for civilian agency cargo and cargo gained from the Export and Import Bank.

But, DOE has continually assumed the cargo preference laws do not apply to loans it provides under Title XVII of the Energy Act of 2005. Specifically, Title XVII of the Energy Policy Act gives the agency the ability to guarantee 80 percent of the cost of the development of renewable energy systems, including offshore wind and ocean energy, advanced fossil energy technologies, hydrogen fuel cell technologies, carbon capture and sequestration facilities, efficient electrical generation and transmission facility and a variety of similar projects.

But, DOE repeatedly avoids heeding cargo preference laws legislated by Congress under 46 U.S.C.5503. The first time Cummings asked Masuda about the DOE’s lack of compliance was at the July 2010 hearing before the Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Transportation. Masuda could not answer the question. And, Cummings was incensed and sent him away to talk to DOE about not following the law. Masuda returned on September 29th, and still didn’t have an answer beyond that he is still working with the highest levels of DOE. Again, Cummings was not pleased to say the least.

US Flagged Vessels in Foreign Commerce

The Shipping Act of 1916, the Merchant Marine Act of 1920 and the Merchant Marine Act of 1936 tried to support the US maritime industry. But, after World War II, unfavorable tax laws and Reagan’s end of subsidies stopped the industry’s growth and it struggled beyond the Jones Act. Today, the only funding schemes for the industry have been for supporting the US military via the Maritime Security Act of 1996. The Maritime Security Act of 2003 reauthorized fixed payments from the Department of Defense (DOD) and expanded the program from 47 US flagged ships to 60 ships. It also increased annual payments totaling $174 million or $2.9 million for each of the 60 ships. And, the 2011 authorization will increase the MSP to $186 million until it expires in 2015.

In 1975, the world’s fleet consisted of 22,872 commercial ships and by 2008 the amount grew to 52,944 ships, which is a 221 percent increase. Meanwhile, during the same period of time, the US merchant marine fleet declined 89 percent. And, by 2009, the US fleet transported only 1.5 percent of US imports and exports transported by water aboard registered ships to the US.

Another way of sketching the decline is when the Comptroller General of the US said in a 1981 report that US flags declined from 1,065 ships in 1959 to 576 in 1979, and that foreign trade transported by US ships declined from 10.2 percent to 4.4 percent during the same period. This is remarkable a decline of US maritime influence considering that at the end of World War II the US merchant marine fleet stood at more than 2,000 vessels.

Recently, MARAD reported that the US merchant fleet consisted of 94 ships; 50 container vessels; 23 roll-on-roll-off; nine dry bulk carriers; eight multi-purpose ships (including five heavy lift ships); and four tankers. And the average age of the US fleet in foreign commerce is 15 years and all of these ships were built overseas.

Additionally, the 94 US flagged ships provide 1,880 billets for US mariners, which employs about 3,760 mariners. The UN Conference on Trade and Development reported in 2009, the US is ranked 21st in the world in terms of registered tonnage, which is about one-percent of the world total. And, the majority of these ships operate in the domestic coastwise trade.

Costs of Operating US Flagged Vessels

Foreign lobbyists and anti-Jones Act proponents often say the US Merchant Marine cannot compete in global commerce due to construction and mariner costs. But, how can the US industry compete when foreign countries offer health care and benefits to its citizens while US maritime companies bear those costs? Furthermore, many countries do not tax income from shipping operations of their flag companies. Consequently, the advantages of foreign operators are lower corporate taxes and predictable liabilities each year.

Check this out; US ship operators are liable for a 50 percent duty on maintenance and repairs performed on their vessels at overseas yards. This tariff was enacted in 1866, and the Tariff Act of 1930 set the duty for today’s level. Foreign operators are not subjected to such a tax, and there are those in the business that have suggested US flags working in foreign trades not be subjected to the tax.

Administrator Masuda said at the hearing yesterday that MARAD is committed to the American Marine Highways (AMH) and building new ships in US shipyards. But, both Cummings and Masuda understand it was only strategic positioning for the record, because there are no funds for the maritime industry, which make Cargo Preferences even more precious to US flags. Considering US GDP for 2009 was $1.4 trillion and the American Marine Highway program got $7 million in funding and Title XI gets $3.5 million says volumes about the government’s commitment to the industry. How can Cummings’ committee and the Administrator do anything constructive for the industry with their hands tied behind their backs? And, that’s why Cummings is valiantly trying to get US flags every penny he can find.

A Real American Economic Recovery Plan

President Obama and DOT Secretary LaHood need only look to America’s vast coastline to find the real quick answer to the US economic recovery. US waterways are renewable, and the port infrastructure is already in place. With 10 percent of Americans unemployed there are plenty of potential workers to operate a marine highway system. While Representatives Cummings, Oberstar (D-MN), and Taylor (D-MS) continue to champion the US maritime industry, their musings only fall on deft ears.

Remove the Harbor Maintenance Tax, because it’s just plain stupid to double tax containers moving within US ports. Really fund the American Marine Highways with $1 billion per year for the next five years to build more ships that will call medium to small US ports. Increase funding for Title XI to $1 billion, because more loans mean increased revenues for government coffers. Obama wants to rebuild the American infrastructure, and nothing could be faster than funding the US maritime and shipyards industries.

Investments in wind and solar will take years, if not decades. Like it or not, the US will be reliant on fossil fuels for the near term—that’s my lifetime. Continually reinvesting in the roadway and highway infrastructure only promotes more oil usage, and increased pollution and congestion. America’s future growth and wealth can be found just offshore, but Capitol Hill is gridlocked and full of lobbyists and special interest. And, no one can see vast oceans and inland rivers beyond the concrete jungle of cities and highways.

Tony Munoz can be contacted at tonymunoz@maritime-executive.com with comments, input and questions on this editorial.

This post originally appeared on Maritime Executive

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