The new irish food pyramid

By now, hopefully this new irish food pyramid has been spread through social media and has at least made an appearance in your life.

here's a few very brief thoughts on it, it's early and we reserve the right to come back and add some more later.

perhaps the easiest way to go about it is like this...

positives
• there's a much bigger emphasis on fruits and vegetables, something that we could all increase.
• it's all real food. we see issues with this all the time. real food takes time, time to shop for, time to prepare and cook. people are working longer hours, are commuting for longer, and/or have kids to collect/get to bed. this makes processed foods and 'foods on the go' a legitimate option.
• the junk food is now completely seperate from the pyramid. 
​• there are additional case studies giving sample meal plans and importantly portion size guides.
• it gives nutrition advice a  media platform, albeit only for a few days.

negatives
​• not enough emphasis on the meat/fish/beans level. if the ultimate goal is to reduce the weight of the nation then why not look at the overwhelming evidence of substantial levels of dietary protein and its effects on weight management.
• public health policy is so dis-jointed here, i still don't know which website to visit for nutrition information or policy. (safefood, hse, healthyireland etc.) all of which are so difficult from a user perspective to navigate in their own right.
• take away a milennials smartphone or the internet and i'll bet that they'd struggle to construct or cook a meal from any of the ingredients on that list, and that's a big problem.

want to delve deeper into some of the other documents that accompanies it, i eventually found them here.