The U.S. Government recently endorsed a new food pyramid. This pyramid rises like a sphinx from the ashes for those dieters who enjoy increasing their daily intake of whole grains. Hey Dr. Atkins, carbohydrates are not so evil after all!

The assumption built into the pyramid’s new guidelines is that if American students follow the government’s nutritional advice, in addition to exercising regularly, they will be physically healthy and have a properly maintained physique.

Fortunately, there are no such pyramids for the recommended daily allowance of reading material for the mind at this university. Each student chooses his or her daily materials and then builds a one-of-a-kind literary pyramid in a shared quest for knowledge. The desired outcome of this activity is to encourage the brain to digest knowledge so that it can sharpen its mental powers.

Joe, a 20-year-old ISU student from Urbandale, might read five servings of online golfing news, one serving of the Daily and two servings of Portuguese Civilization and Culture reserve reading material for his intellectual health on an average day.

Makiko, a 29-year-old ISU graduate student from Nara, Japan, may require two servings of news from the Kyoto Shimbun newspaper online, four servings of her economics textbook and six e-mail messages from family and friends to help her stay in peak intellectual form.

In a nation where media pundits and cultural critics bemoan the rise of visual literacy transmitted via television and the Internet to young American minds, while grumbling about the fall of a literate literati in the same breathe, let’s prove them wrong.

The following things do not define our generation: Reality television programs on which the winning contestant has consumed a dozen earthworms and 20 live crickets; heroes who take the form of a wealthy middle-aged man with bad hair screaming, “You’re fired!” at least once a week; or a barrage of advertisements warning us that our current brand of toilet paper resembles sandpaper; the breath mints we have in our pockets only stun chronic bad breath; and feminine deodorant spray or Viagra are the fourth necessity of life after food, shelter and clothing.

I want to prove the pundits and critics wrong because in one day I revel in the miniature but multiple epiphanies that the activity of reading brings into my life. Reading one sentence often stops me dead on the page while I juggle several ideas in my mind like rainbow-colored balls.

Terry Tempest Williams explained the joy of the written word in her essay “Why I Write.” Williams wrote, “I write to imagine things differently and in imagining things differently perhaps the world will change.” Writing and reading are interchangeable in her sentence.

When I engage in the activity of reading, I often see alternatives to the status quo and perhaps these alternatives will change the world. One important reason for bringing multiple minds together at Iowa State is so that our combined brain power can foster positive change.

Like our bodies, our minds demand regular exercise and a healthy diet. We must feed our intellects tasty morsels and the proper number of servings of novels, newspapers, magazines, textbooks, and words, words, words — glorious words!

In his book “Family Matters,” Rohinton Mistry writes, “Our minds contain worlds enough to amuse us for an eternity,” but only if we treat them right.

When we have problems thinking the same thoughts day after day, and we find new ideas interrupting our normal brain waves, then we know that our own unique intellectual pyramids are working. Job well done.