* University of Pennsylvania obesity expert Shiriki Kumanyika told the Philadelphia Inquirer: "I hope they buy a lot of TV time."
That's one thing that won't be happening. As The New York Times reported, the USDA doesn't have any advertising dollars budgeted toward reaching Americans via radio, television and print, all sources that plenty of people with limited or no Internet access tend to see more of.
| ___About Random Access___ Random Access is a daily column by Robert MacMillan that explores the latest trends in technology and how they are changing daily life. Random Access won't tell you why a new gizmo will revolutionize your ad server. It will tell you about episodes from daily life -- exasperated waiters who use blogs to vent about their customers, whole runs of salmon injected with nanoparticles for individual tracking in Norwegian fjords and the growing number of DJs who are sick of being sidelined in favor of iPods. (Only one of these stories is fake.) Most of what you see will be culled from news sources and blogs from around the world, though we will supplement Random Access with original files on the novel, unusual, bizarre and reactionary happenings in the world of technology and society. E-mail: Send links and comments. | | |
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However, USDA spokeswoman Terri Teuber said that the agency will release plenty of printed material and work closely with dieticians, nutritionists, educators, schools and more groups that do have the resources to disseminate the information publicly.
"We've had intense interest already from restaurant chains, grocery store chains, culinary schools," Teuber told me in an interview this morning. "They're very interested in helping us promote not only the pyramid but the key nutrition messages in the guidelines. I'm confident you are going to see this message in many different venues."
The Des Moines Register reported that the Grocery Manufacturers of America, a large and powerful trade group that represents companies such as General Mills, ConAgra and Del Monte, will sponsor a nationwide education campaign in conjunction with the Weekly Reader, that magazine that, at least in my elementary school, sat unopened on our desks for months at a time.
All the offline distribution of the new guidelines can't change one big fact. The nutrition information at mypyramidtracker.gov depends on users entering in their personal data to work. How are those non-wired Americans supposed to find the right diet, especially when the USDA has no plans to commit the more than 600 nutrition scenarios it posted on the Web to print?
"The difficulty with that is that it's personalized," Teuber said. "There is no way to respond on paper... Certainly [people without Internet access] can get the nutrition messages, but the tracker requires the Internet."
For half of America that's online, this is a great idea, and judging by the slow response of the USDA Web site yesterday and this morning, plenty of American Internet users are interested in learning more about eating right. For the other half, it's a new digital divide.
If the administration really wants to fight obesity, it will buttonhole Congress for a few extra dollars to buy some recycled paper and figure out a way to get this plan out to the rest of the country.
Why Isn't Brian Williams Blogging?
The answer is "I don't know," according to Jeff Zucker. The president of NBC Universal Television Group thinks that it might be the right time for Williams and the network's other top news anchors and celebrity interviewers to get busy in the blogosphere. Reuters reported: "'Over the next two years, network news is going to go through a lot more changes,' Zucker said at a Yahoo conference on high-speed Internet use. 'This is one of the biggest issues facing traditional network news divisions.'" Zucker said he is considering outfitting Williams with a blog of his own, as well as Today show co-host Katie Couric.
