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Problem Two: The MyPyramid Menu Planner is built around a relatively small database of about 1,000 foods that limits the tool's capacity to handle diets that stray outside the American meat-and-potatoes norm.

When I used the tool, its database of food choices often did not include foods I typically eat. Davé, a vegetarian of South Asian descent, also found that foods she typically eats did not easily translate into the framework of the MyPyramid system.

Haven of the USDA said that in designing the tool the department selected a representative sample of the most commonly eaten foods, drawn primarily from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2001-2002, a major government survey of Americans' eating habits.

"This is a quick and dirty approach to help consumers get started and get their food groups straight," she said.

The database includes an interesting mix of choices. It includes 61 condiments, 23 types of candy, 20 alcoholic beverages, 14 types of salad dressing and 36 types of breakfast cereal. Cassava with Creole sauce and potato pudding are also included. Hummus, a staple in my home, was included, but tempeh, a soyfood I serve with cooked greens, was not.

Problem Three: The MyPyramid Menu Planner takes a food-based, rather than nutrient-based, approach to assessing diets. This flaw can result in inaccurate and misleading dietary guidance.

For example, the Menu Planner does not give credit when calculating calcium intake when you enter high-calcium foods such as tofu, beans, cashews and soymilk.

Some groups choose not to drink milk, and some cannot. Rates of lactose intolerance tend to be high among African-Americans, for instance. "If you were a vegan, it would be a problem," Davé said. "Most of my clients are African-American and don't drink milk. At least 70 percent of the world's adults do not digest milk," she said.

Looking at it more closely, the Menu Planner puts heavy emphasis on a single food that makes up an entire category -- the milk group -- in the MyPyramid dietary guidance system. The system gives you credit for eating milk with lots of salt and fat (cheese) and milk with fat and added sugar (ice cream).

But eat a bowl of calcium-rich garbanzo beans? Zippo. It does not compute. If your calcium comes from nondairy sources, the Planner shows a deficit in servings from the milk group.

I asked USDA about this problem and was told that the Menu Planner isn't meant to work for everyone. If you want a more precise dietary analysis, the department points to the MyPyramid Menu Tracker, available at the same Web site as the Menu Planner.

"The Tracker is an older tool with a much larger food base," said Trish Britten, a nutrition scientist with the USDA Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion. "The Tracker has over 4,000 data items.

"For a general picture, a quick and easy approach, use the Planner," said Britten. She said the Planner is intended to be useful for school kids and people who are not as interested in going into more depth in analyzing their diets.

So we spent $550,000 developing a tool best used by kids and people uninterested in in-depth analysis of their diets?

Despite the time, effort and money, the truth remains: If you're looking for help designing a health-supporting diet, this government has chosen not to provide it.

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