The USDA's new MyPlate icon is designed to help Americans plan healthy meals.

RODALE NEWS, WASHINGTON, DC—Too much information. That's the reason government's food icon, My Pyramid—an old warhorse meant to encourage healthy eating that has undergone some changes over the last two decades—has been put out to pasture, shoved aside by the new USDA food guide, a startlingly simple icon called MyPlate.

After years of trying to teach Americans how to eat healthy and stay fit—obviously without much success—the government is going for simplicity in its messaging. The new plate icon is an extension of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans that were released several months ago.

THE DETAILS: At a news conference Thursday at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), first lady Michelle Obama and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack suggested that the complexity of the pyramid icon was the reason it was not successful. "It's too complex and difficult to remember," Vilsack said.

So that familiar tiered triangle has been replaced by a circle, in the form of a plate divided into four parts that may help Americans control their portion sizes. Vegetable and fruits take up one-half the space in the new USDA food guide; protein and grains share the other half, with the greater share going to grains. Next to the plate is a smaller circle, at the top right just where a glass of milk might be, representing dairy.

Dessert? It's a sometime thing, not part of the new icon.

As he shoved the pyramid into the dustbin, Vilsack described MyPlate as "a simple visual aid, research-based." Continuing with the theme, the first lady asked, "What's more simple than a plate?"