The food pyramid has been around for years. This guide is the key to living a long and healthy life.

But you already knew that. The pyramid is not top secret information. Its plastered on cereal boxes, posters, the Internet you name it, its there.

You cant escape it. So why, then, do people insist on paying enormous amounts of money on fad diets and pills to lose weight when this information is offered for free?

The answer is rooted in the problem of why Americans are obese in the first place — laziness.

People are always looking for a quick fix, and jumping from fad diet to fad diet is not the answer. Some people spend their whole lives concentrated on food — what they can eat and what they can't eat, good foods versus bad foods. Food becomes an obsession.

Fad dieting is not only unhealthy — for it usually cuts out whole food groups — but it is usually impossible to stick to for a long period of time. Just look at Oprah.

Or see Exhibit A: A person decides to go on the delicious cabbage soup diet. The person is strong and keeps it up for two weeks.

But after the second week, the person caves. And not only does the person cave, but the deprivation this person endured causes him or her to binge on a whole chocolate cake (OK, not a whole chocolate cake — or maybe).

The pounds this person lost come back — and more — thanks to the chocolate cake.

So to sum it up, what has this person accomplished? Nothing except suffering through days of pure torture.

If, in the rare situation this person is successful in eating only cabbage soup for a long period of time, it is not something to be rejoiced — for now it is not called a diet, but an eating disorder.

Eating disorders represent another danger of consistent dieting — it can become a compulsion. Slowly, as dieters notice weight loss results, they could fall into the unhealthy cycle of cutting out more and more types of food and restricting what they can eat until only left with "meals" of celery sticks and crackers.

Other people skip the fad diets route altogether. Instead, they turn to the so-called weight loss pill to shed the pounds. Celebrity Anna Nicole Smith allegedly lost a substantial amount of weight just by popping TRIMSPA pills.

Those little pills were so — allegedly — successful, she went on to become the poster girl for TRIMSPA.

Even Britney Spears was caught with a bottle of diet pills spilling out of her purse a couple of years ago. But Spears also has publicly professed that she exercised by doing 1,000 sit-ups per day. So I'm pretty sure it was more than the diet pills in her case.

I find it hard to believe that simply taking a pill would prove to be so effective in weight loss. Even if it were, what happens when you stop taking the miracle pill? Do you gain all of the weight back? Likely.

And even if you continue taking the pill for the rest of your life, there are risky health consequences. Some studies have proven that diet pills cause heart complications and eventually death.

How ironic — taking pills to become healthy, yet suffering heart problems and even death in the process. Isn't it just a whole lot easier to stick to the basics?

If someone really wants to become healthy, there is only one way to do it —and it has been known since the beginning of time.

Yep, you guessed it. It all comes back to the food pyramid. Now don't get me wrong — I don't claim to be a doctor, nor am I a dietitian. But I do read the back of cereal boxes.

Just follow the food guide pyramid, exercise a little and indulge some — cabbage soup and diet pills need not be included.

Elizabeth Swanson is a State News MS&U writer. Reach her at swans130@msu.edu.