Food Guide Pyramid

The food guide pyramid is a graphic device developed by the U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) as an educational tool to illustrate the relative proportion of foods types recommended to compose a healthy diet. The USDA has been issuing dietary recommendations for Americans since 1894, and the best-known food guide pyramid (hereafter “the traditional food pyramid”) was developed in 1992 and is still used on food packaging and some official Web sites, including that of the National Agricultural Library of the USDA. The traditional food pyramid was a revision of the “four basic food groups” which had been used in USDA educational materials since 1956: the groups, and recommended minimum servings per day, were meats, poultry, fish, legumes, eggs, and nuts (two servings); dairy products (two servings); grains (four servings); and fruits and vegetables (four servings). The traditional food pyramid was officially replaced in 2005 by MyPyramid, which presented the similar concepts in a different graphical form and includes a computer interface to allow individuals to create individualized nutritional recommendations based on their age, gender, and activity level.

The traditional food pyramid is divided into four horizontal layers, and the middle layers are divided into two sections each: the size of the sections graphically represents the recommended servings of each type of food. Notes to the pyramid include definitions of what constitutes one serving: for instance one cup of milk, two to three ounces of cooked meat, one cup of raw leafy vegetables and one slice of bread all constitute a single serving. The base of the pyramid is the bread, cereal, rice, and pasta group (6–11 servings per day, including several servings per day of whole grains). The second layer of the pyramid is divided into the vegetable group and the fruit group (three to five servings daily, including legumes and dark green leafy vegetables several times per week) and the fruit group (two to four servings daily). The third layer of the pyramid contains the milk, yogurt, and cheese group and the meat, poultry, fish, dry beans, eggs, and nuts group (two to three servings are recommended daily from each group, and in both cases, low-fat options are recommended). The top layer of the food pyramid represents fats, oils, and sweets; no specific consumption recommendations are given other than that these foods should be used sparingly.

The traditional food guide pyramid was replaced in 2005 by MyPyramid, which presents the proportion of different food groups recommended by dividing a triangle into color-coded vertical sections; the width of each section represents the relative proportion recommended for that food group. The http://MyPyramid.gov Web site, includes the MyPyramid Plan, an interactive tool that allows calculation of personalized dietary recommendations. While the ability to create customized recommendations and the incorporation of considerations such as activity level represent an advance over the traditional food pyramid, the graphical presentation of MyPyramid makes it less useful as an educational tool. The reason is that [Page 287]while the traditional food pyramid included pictures of food and was labeled with the names of the groups and recommended servings, MyPyramid uses only colored sections whose meaning is not clear without access to a printed key explaining the meaning of each color. In addition, because there are no generalized serving recommendations included in MyPyramid, a person without access to a computer cannot obtain information on the number of servings recommended for each food group.

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