More inane and meaningless stuff that really ticks me off:

Several months back, the FDA released a new food pyramid. This one, instead of having building blocks (big honking block of grains on the bottom, smaller ones of fruit and veggies next, still smaller meat and dairy next, itty bitty fats on top) has different colored stripes for each of the food groups. Theoretically, it's supposed to be easier to understand.

So now they've introduced the food pyramid for kids, with a lovely new interactive rocket ship game. Kids drag foods into their "fuel tank", drag activities into their "activity battery", and when they've built their menu and activity for a day, try to see if they can blast off and make it to Planet Power. Kinda dorky, but in a fun way.

So what ticked me off? The food selection in the kids game! For breakfast, if you eat cereal, your choices are a toasted oat cereal or a sugary cereal. OK, I'm sure 90% of the kids out there eat one of those two, but my kids happen to eat either Wheat Chex or Mini Wheats! For dinner, the only, repeat ONLY veggie choices were broccoli or a spinach salad!!!!! What about squash? Green beans? Asparagus? Beets? Cauliflower?

OK, yes this is a minor thing. But, if the point of the game is to help kids make healthy CHOICES about their diets, shouldn't the game offer them some.....choices? Not to mention the fact that the stupid game is put out by the people that created the pyramid, which means THEY HAVE ACCESS TO THE FLIPPIN' DATABASE IT'S ALL BASED UPON!!!!!!!! It's not like they'd have to hire temps to key it all in, it's already there!!!!

Sheesh.

Of course, the real lesson in all of this is programmers should never be allowed to visit interactive web sites......

If you're interested, the URL for the game is: http://www.mypyramid.gov/kids/kids_game.html