The food pyramid in my new HMO handbook doesn’t actually say you should have eleven servings of bread and cereals per day. It says six to eleven servings, and it lumps together bread, cereal, pasta, rice and tortillas. It also tells me what one serving is, and from that information I pretty much convinced myself that eleven servings are better than six.

One serving from that category is one slice of bread, one ounce of cereal, half a bagel, or half a cup of pasta or rice. That isn’t much food, although I might be able to live on eleven slices of bread a day, as long as I could smear something good on each one. Sadly, it doesn’t work out that way. Butter and margarine are squeezed way up at the top of the pyramid, in the category where it tells you to “eat sparingly.” Not even one serving a day, just “sparingly.”

However, two tablespoons of peanut butter are considered one serving in the protein category, which isn’t called the protein category. It’s called the “meat, poultry, fish, eggs, cooked dry beans, tofu” category. Since you’re only allowed two or three servings per day, you have to make some hard choices. One egg is a serving, so three eggs and you’re out, with no meat or beans. Or peanut butter, for that matter.

Fruits (2 to 4 servings) and vegetables (3 to 5 servings) are big with the USDA. This has always been a problem area for me, especially in the vegetable area of the pyramid. One apple or one banana makes one serving. It doesn’t say how many grapes you can eat, unless I’m supposed to put them into the category that says I can have half a cup of raw, canned or cooked fruits or vegetables. It’s good to know they don’t discriminate against canned, so that I don’t have to go the store and pick up all the makings of a fruit cocktail or a three-bean salad.

I can’t find potatoes anywhere on the pyramid or in the appended notes to the pyramid. What’s up with that? I love my roast potatoes, and I’m willing to compromise on serving size as long as I can keep cooking them and eating them. Since the book doesn’t tell me not to eat potatoes at all, I’ll have to assume that when they mention “leafy” vegetables, they’re not saying those are the only kinds you should eat.

My favorite part of the nutrition section of the handbook is the little box where it spells out the 80-20 rule. If you do it right eighty percent of the time, you can go crazy the rest of the time. (It doesn’t exactly say it in those words, but that’s how I read it.) Why, that’s more than one full day a week! I can go 86-14 and feel virtuous. So I fixed French toast this morning, and I’ll feel pretty good about myself if I can just wait until next weekend to do it again.