New Study Suggests Weekly Food Guide Pyramid

If you’re going to eat a lot on the weekends and holidays, maybe you should cut back during the rest of the week.

That’s according to University of Pittsburgh Marketing Professor Jeff Inman. He says he studied two years worth of food-intake data that told him people eat a good bit more over the weekend.

“That’s not too much of a surprise,” says Inman. “What was a little bit of a surprise was what meal that comes from.”

Breakfast intake increases by almost ten percent on weekends, says Inman. Nosh rates shoot up on many holidays, as well. The significance?

“Maybe [people] should cut back a little bit during the week, so they have that little extra bit of calorie budget built up that they can spend on the weekends and holidays,” says Inman.

That’s why he’s suggesting an expanded time frame for the Food Guide Pyramid to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Inman says it should work with the natural tendency of people to splurge or conserve, depending on the day.

“I think that people want to have a little bit of flexibility in their food intake, so having some guidelines on how they can manage has to be to the good,” says Inman.