After five years, six committee meetings, muchballyhooing, and $2 million, the U.S. Department of Agriculture at lastreleased to the public yesterday a logo to replace its famous food pyramid. Called” Choose My Plate ,”the new design is a dinner-plate-like circle divided into four pie-slice-shapedpieces to represent the four food groups (fruits, vegetables, grains, andprotein), and another little circle off to the side for your discretionarydaily dairy portion.
Aside from the logo’s near uselessness as adietary-information-conveying tool — Is it a pie chart? How much does eachportion represent? And why is the protein purple? — the candy-colored design itselffails to be aesthetically exciting. Actually, it looks awfully familiar.
In fact, as I look at the bottom of my computerscreen, I see the Microsoft Windows logo and the Google Chrome logo, just twoof Choose My Plate’s döppelgangers. But there are many more.
Clickthe image below to launch a slide show of the Choose My Plate logo candy-colored döppelgangers.
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