You may have read about the new food pyramid recently unveiled by the USDA. It's customized! It emphasizes exercise! (There's a little guy running up the side of it!) There are 12 of them!

The pyramid has come under fire by nutritionists who complain that it doesn't really encourage anyone to eat less of anything. But what bothers me about it is that it's not really a pyramid.

OK, so here's the old pyramid:

The meaning of it is immediately clear: eat more of the stuff at the base, eat less of the stuff at the top. That's how a pyramid graphic should work. Here's the new one:

By turning the sections on their side, there's no longer any relationship to the pyramid shape. Other than the guy running up the side of it. The amount of foods recommended still relate to the area covered, but the reader can't immediately grasp which foods to eat more of and which to eat less of. You could get the same information out of a stacked bar chart:

Bad graphics. Someone get Tufte on the phone. Stat.

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