Product Description

Animal characters learn about "good eating everyday" in a restaurant called The Edible Pyramid, where the waiter offers the foods grouped in sections of the Food Guide Pyramid and customers learn how many servings they need each day.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2050205 in Books
• Published on: 1994-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 1 pages

From School Library Journal
Kindergarten-Grade 3?An entertaining, attractive introduction to the food pyramid, still a fairly new concept in nutrition education. The menu at the Edible Pyramid restaurant is based on the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture's food guide. The head waiter?a French cat in tails?explains the dishes to his customers, a menagerie of other animals in equally formal attire. Each segment of the pyramid is presented in a two-page spread, defining the food group mentioned and illustrating it with many mouth-watering examples. The recommended number of daily servings is also explained, and after going through the entire menu, the maitre'd helps his diners select a balanced meal. Paintings of the animals and food are done in muted colors. A small pyramid appears in the corner of each illustration, with the block being examined highlighted. Leedy's text is brief and to the point, but witty, especially the animals' commentary. Other helpful books on nutrition for this age group include Dorothy Hinshaw Patent's Nutrition (Holiday, 1992) and Dorothy Baldwin's Health and Food (Rourke, 1987), but neither emphasizes the food pyramid.?Joyce Adams Burner, formerly at Spring Hill Middle School, KS
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Ages 5-7. Ushering a group of elegantly clothed animals into the grand opening of the Edible Pyramid restaurant, the suave waiter introduces the selections on the U.S. Department of Agriculture food pyramid, explaining the choices in each category, the number of daily servings recommended for each group, and what a "serving" means. The bold, stylized artwork in muted colors, featuring plates of pancakes, bagels, crackerss and pretzels or a tableful of yogurt, milks, and cheese has a certain panache, but the brief text is flat and dull. Still, there's not much on this important topic, and teachers explaining the food pyramid to young children will find this a useful picture book. Carolyn Phelan

About the Author
Loreen Leedy was born in Wilmington, Delaware in 1959. She majored in art in college but wasn't sure what kind of artist to be. She began making polymer clay jewelry and chess sets and selling them at craft shows. The pins, earrings, and chess pieces were whimsical pigs, cats, dragons, and other animals. At the age of twenty-five years old she began turning her jewelry into book characters. Her first published title was A Number of Dragons, a counting book written in verse. She has written and illustrated over 30 picture books, and is working on one right now in her studio in central Florida. Loreen’s husband, Andy, is a scientist who works on space biology research at Kennedy Space Center.

Customer Reviews

A great book to teach the food pyramid to young children!!!
I am a first grade teacher in Indiana. I used this book with my students when studying the food pyramid. It was a big success. The illustrations were very bright and kept the students attention! The text idea of the restaurant was fun for the children. Their most favorite part was trying to figure out what the creature was that kept trying to get some food. Look and see if you can guess!!!

The Edible Pyramid has been updated!
Please forgive me for the 5 star review since I'm the author and illustrator of this book, but I am very enthusiastic about it. It has been revised to reflect the USDA's new MyPyramid program which is designed to educate children about their food choices and encourage them to be active every day. I combined four of the original Grains pages into one spread to allow room for a new 2-page spread about exercise. In regards to a very negative review below, people in cultures all over the world have included foods from the various food groups in their diets and have enjoyed good health. It is important for children to become familiar with a wide variety of food choices and to understand what is a vegetable, what is a fruit, what is a grain, and so on. Happy eating and reading!
Loreen Leedy

Obsolete unhealth information recanted by FDA
This old book is based on the highly flawed 1992 FDA Food Pyramid. The CDC documented the rise in American obesity in direct response to the publication and propigation of the Food Pyramid. In 2005, the FDA recanted their obsolete unhealthy information (with diabetes-causing high glycemic index foods at the foundation of the old Food Pyramid).

This book should be banned and replaced with modern healthy food information to stem the deadly tide of childhood obesity, diabetes and heart disease. This book is still being promoted by Lavar Burton on The Reading Rainbow on public television. Its message is harming the mindset and bodies of many innocent children, by setting bad habits at an early age.

Vegetables are secondary in this book. Today, the FDA places much more emphasis on healthy fruits and vegatables.

Larry Hartweg
Chief Editor of JoyfulAging.com