The USDA’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion has unveiled its MyPyramid Menu Planner (www.MyPyramid.gov/Planner), designed to help people follow a healthy diet.

It’s an attractive site and fairly easy to figure out. When you sign in, you’ll give your age, sex, weight, height and activity level. That allows the computer program to determine your dietary goals for each day. As you enter what you eat, a colorful bar graph updates how your diet measures up to the recommended amounts of grains, vegetables, fruits, milk, meat and beans, oils and “extras.”

I tried it out by entering my breakfast: 1/2 cup of oats cooked in 1 cup skim milk with 1 tablespoon dried cherries and blueberries and 1 tablespoon chopped walnuts, topped with another 1/4 cup milk and 1 tablespoon of maple syrup. At home, I added up the calories, using the nutrition facts on the labels, and came up with an even 400.

On the MyPyramid site, I typed in “oatmeal.” From the choices that appeared, I clicked on “oatmeal (plain).” Next I had to choose an amount, ranging from 1/4 cup to 2 cups, of “oatmeal, cooked.” Did that mean the oatmeal was measured before or after cooking? According to the information provided with the choices, half a cup contained 73 calories, and my oatmeal box said that my portion totaled 150 calories. I clicked on “1 cup.”

On to the dried cherries and blueberries. I had no luck finding them and settled for raisins, reasoning that one dried fruit, nutritionally, is similar to another. One miniature box of raisins totals 42 calories, close enough to the 50 calories provided by the berries and cherries.

The walnuts presented another challenge. The smallest amount was 1/2 ounce, double what I ate. The syrup and milk were easy to find and add. According to the site, I had consumed 437 calories (about 20 percent of my daily requirement), including a third of the grains I needed for the day, almost half of the milk, a fourth of the fruit, less than a fifth of the protein and a sixth of the fat.

The site’s developers are looking for problems and plan to address them this summer. In the meantime, if you use the site, keep your food packages handy in case you have to compare and “guesstimate” which choice to select. You also may want to check the nutrition facts on your foods for fiber and sodium contents, which aren’t listed by the MyPyramid planner.

If you’re interested in an even more accurate picture of what you eat, you may be better served by www.nutritiondata.com. Like the MyPyramid site, NutritionData uses USDA figures. Unlike the government site, it allows users to enter foods in their own personal databases, called pantries, and reports on all nutrients, including vitamins and minerals.