No one knows who built the original food pyramid. The method of its construction is likewise a mystery, one which has occupied historians and conspiracy theorists alike for years. At the time of its appearance, you see, the American civilization simply didn't have the technology to create something so complex. Some see this enigma as evidence that an alien super race inhabited America at the time I was a child and has now moved on to build food pyramids on other inhabited planets. I've never been able to embrace this view. Sure, the pyramid is unbelievably cryptic and unduplicatable, but I'm of the opinion that certain highly advanced individuals on our own planet were responsible for its existence. I prefer to see it as evidence of our own greatness.

Regardless of how it came into being, however, the food pyramid has just been revamped by nutrition experts in order to simplify the guidelines for the masses. This is our Latin Vulgate edition, intended to convey—with minimal obfuscation—the food choices we should be making. Every man, woman, and child in America can now see more clearly what dietary recommendations they are going to continue to ignore.

With the new layout of the pyramid, you'll now see horizontal stripes rather than leveled blocks. These stripes are orange, green, red, blue, purple, and yellow, colors which represent, respectively, grains; vegetables; fruits; milk and dairy products; meat, beans, fish, & nuts; and nasty fatty ugly oils that you are to eat only occasionally and not every day for breakfast like I do. The color bands vary in width according to how much you're supposed to draw from them. So while the orange bar is a blazing swath of fruity goodness, the yellow bar is almost nonexistent. It almost appears accidental, as if someone inadvertently brushed a highlighter down the pyramid poster in a board meeting, and it just wasn't ever removed. My favorite part of the new pyramid, however, is the man playing air guitar on the stairs. I love it that the Food and Drug Administration is trying to encourage us to attend more rock concerts.

We should be lauding this revolutionary new pyramid. It's a triumph for the common man and woman, a fearless manifesto for those of us who, try as we might, simply were unable to grasp the complexities of the original. Thank you, FDA! Thank you for having the insight to realize that the real reason our nation has been spiraling downward into an epidemic of obesity is that we didn't know what we were supposed to be eating in the first place.