Confused about Pyramid

Ok, so I followed the link to the USDA Food Pyramid and printed out thier recommendations.  I am a bit confused; they provide a chart with calorie levels and corresponding food group daily intake.  So for a 1400 calorie diet the daily intake for meat was 4oz.  That a seems a little low for the whole day! Then it goes onto say for the same calorie level. 1.5 cups of fruit and 1.5 cups of veg, 5oz grain, 2 cups milk, and 4 tsp oil and they allow you 171 discretionary calories.    Does anyone else think that this seems low on some of the groups?

Well,

1400 is not a lot of calories, so IMHO it is no surprise that the values are so low.  There's not a lot of calories to work with there.

Yes, I agree.  But if you look at 3200 on the chart they only allow for 7oz  of protein for the day.  It just seems very low to me....

I suspect it's assuming that you get protein from foods other than just meat though.  4 oz. of meat is probably going to give you about 25 g of protein.  2 cups of milk gets you another 25 g of protein.  Presumably the grain will have *some* protein in it (though not a major source).  Let's say 5 g.  And the discretionary calories, fruit and veg will also have traces of protein; let's say another 5 g total. 

So, for your 1400 calorie diet, you're getting somewhere around 60 grams of protein.  That's 240 calories, or 17% of your calories.  If you think that's really low, spend your discretionary calories on more protein.  If you did that, you could easily have 100 grams of protein in your diet - bringing it up to 29% of your calories.  The problem is that 1400 calories is very little, so there simply aren't many to go around.

You could also use grains with higher protein content (pulses, quinoa, etc.) rather than the standard wheat or corn.