Q-Industries

Q-Industries develops USDA’s MyPyramid Menu Planner

Website features interactive tool for food, nutrition and menu planning

Washington, D.C. – August 14, 2008 – Eating too much meat and not enough vegetables? Need to figure out where to cut calories to lose weight, while creating healthy meal choices to get all your nutrients?

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s MyPyramid website (http://www.mypyramid.gov/) answers those questions and more with the Menu Planner, a unique new interactive tool developed by Q-Industries, that lets people plug in their food choices to gauge how the calories and nutrition of their meals stack up to recommended guidelines, while helping them to create and modify menus to stay within their goals.

Based on the USDA’s guidelines for the five food categories - grains, vegetables, fruit, milk, meat and beans – Menu Planner lets people find the balance between their diet and physical activity and how to plan meals to get the most nutrition from each food group based on their age, weight and activity level.

Q-Industries designed and architected the My Menu application to be easy enough for school children to use, and practical enough for moms to create and track meals for multiple family members. Using advanced web technologies such as Ajax and Flash, Q developed My Menu with a friendly and engaging interface, using clear and colorful displays that automatically calculate nutritional and caloric composition of daily and weekly foods and meals, while also producing suggestions how to improve health.

"With more than a million visitors in the first week after it was launched, the MyPyramid Menu Planner is fast becoming one of USDA's greatest online tools to help Americans make healthier choices,” said Dr. Brian Wansink, Executive Director, USDA Center for Nutrition Policy & Promotion.

Q-Industries, which excels in web-based software applications, was enlisted by Porter Novelli, the USDA contractor for MyPyramid, to develop the Menu Planner application and its user-friendly functionality.

The Daily Menu, Weekly Menu, and Family Member Reports lets users list their food choices for up to seven days, showing at a glance how their choices compare to established guidelines. The My Next Steps feature provides recommendations and ideas for substituting or modifying amount of food items to change calorie intake, and how to increase energy expenditure for optimal health. Users can register on Menu Planner to return to and edit their personal profiles.

"If you’re looking for guidance on how to improve your diet, the Department of Agriculture has a new menu-planning tool that could become your new best friend…. Available at mypyramid.gov, the MyPyramid Menu Planner is based on the USDA 2005 Dietary Guidelines. The Planner tracks calories, including those from foods high in fat and sugar. But it is designed to go beyond counting calories to uncovering not just the quantity, but the quality of foods consumed each day."

― USA TODAY

About Q-Industries:
Q-Industries is an interactive agency that designs and builds online brands, websites and advanced Internet-based applications, with expertise in online marketing, social networking, and new media services. From helping launch start-ups employing 2.0 technologies, to advancing the capabilities of Fortune 500 websites, Q-Industries clients span commercial, government, and association/nonprofit organizations across the U.S.

Founded in 1999, Q-Industries offers custom web application development, and a library of transferable web applications, such as email marketing and content management systems, resulting in more robust applications at lower costs. Please visit: www.q-industries.com or call 202-776-9090.

Contacts:
DCPR
Joel Greenberg, 202-363-1065
Cell: 202-669-3639
joel@dcpr.com