People think their eating habits are much better than they really are. According to a recent study the USDA conducted where the eating habits of 2862 people were tracked for twenty days, nearly half of the participants rated their diets as fair to excellent when 42% were actually rated poor. Bear in mind that this USDA standards have also been liberal compared to health industry proponents.

Online citizens are invited to rate their own diets in an interactive extension of this study. Visit www.usda.gov/cnppand look under "Interactive Healthy Eating Index".

After providing a day's worth of dietary information, you will receive a "score" on the overall quality of your diet for that day. This "score" looks at the types and amounts of food you ate as compared to those recommended by the Food Guide Pyramid. It also tells you how much total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium you have in your diet. The USDA is trying to increase people's awareness of the differences between types of food, creating a Healthy Eating Index (HEI) rating system. The Interactive Healthy Eating Index (IHEI) program is based on the HEI developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion. The HEI measures how well the American diet complies with the recommendations of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and The Food Guide Pyramid.

You might want to keep a diary of the food you eat all day before visiting the site. The USDA has done an excellent job of producing this interactive and educational experience. The program will ask you what and how much you eat. Because many of foods we eat have different nutritional characteristics than we think they do, entering in the wrong amounts can dramatically affect your healthy eating index score.

While you're in the USDA space, you should explore many of the Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion areas. These areas are the current center for promotion of the food pyramid and programs the USDA is involved in. Overall the experience is sure to reveal some new light on diet and nutritional matters. There has been a lot of improvement over the presentation of food groups and the understanding of nutritional values within the food we eat.