What Is The Food Pyramid & Is It Still Important?

T he American government has always been concerned with what goes into our plates. In 1992, it released a new diet plan called the food pyramid, which formed the pillar of most diet discourses for 20 years.

The diet plan was eventually replaced by the much easier to understand myplate plan by the USDA. So is the food pyramid still important? Well no, and today we are going to be looking into why. 

What Is The Food Pyramid? 

The food pyramid forms a hierarchy of foods that are the healthiest for you to consume. At the bottom of the pyramid, we have grains, which the USDA tells us to consume as much as we can.

As we go up, we have the proteins followed by fruits and vegetables. Lastly, we have your fats and oil, which were recommended to be consumed the least. 

What Was Wrong With The Food Pyramid? 

Well, for one thing, the food pyramid was too confusing to understand. A pyramid is always easy to visualize as a hierarchy of foods, meaning fats were considered the food you should have the most rather than the least.

In addition to that, healthy fats such as avocados, nuts, and fish which we know to be good fats were misrepresented in the pyramid and the obvious implication was that it should be eaten the least.

Similarly, the oversimplification of the food pyramid meant that it was hard to separate and distinguish between simple carbohydrates and complex ones. Plus, recent studies ended up showing that limiting your fats and maximizing your carbohydrates ends up increasing your cholesterol rather than decreasing it. 

What Did The Food Pyramid Get Right?

Regardless of the shortcomings of the food pyramid, there are a lot of positives that came out of it. First and foremost, even if the pyramid lacked clarity, it did set up a basic framework for what is or isn't healthy in the minds of everyday Americans.

It also instilled the idea that all foods are good to eat, provided that you eat them at the right amount. This helped in removing myths of forbidden foods, which were creating serious health problems at the time. 

What Are The Alternatives?

As science learns more and more about diets, there have been more diet plans that have come out which intend to resolve the shortcomings of the food pyramid. The most popular of which is USDA’s very own Myplate diet plan.

Right off the bat, the diet plan is much easier to understand than the food pyramid, as all people have to do is match the proportion of their food on the plate with the graph that is provided. In addition to that, vegetables are recommended in far greater proportions than grain.

Fats in the form of dairy are not shunned as the food to avoid or to consume the least but are given a place alongside the plate, giving it importance as food that compliments the main course. 

Even with the strengths of the Myplate program, the diet has had its own fair share of criticism. People have pointed towards the increased involvement of the food industry in the making of this food plan, and the perceived conflict of interests makes people question if this is really a diet plan that they should take up to improve their health.

The plan still cannot properly take into account the complexities of fat in your diet and like its predecessor ends up feeling too simplistic in its representation of what foods to eat and by how much. Harvard’s healthy eating plate is something that tends to resolve the flaws of the USDA diet plan and is pretty popular amongst those considered to be critics of the Myplate plan. 

So is the food pyramid still important in any way? Well, that is something that is impossible to answer. One of the biggest weaknesses of all these diet plans is that it tends to objectify what is inherent.

Everyone’s body is different and has different needs and reactions. Therefore, don't ask, is the food pyramid still important? Look up a nutritionist in your area and let them construct a diet plan that is relevant to your bodily needs.