USDA's Replacement of Food Pyramid Makes Little To No Change

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is serving us a new plate. Throwing out the food pyramid and replacing it with the image of a plate, the USDA hopes to make nutritional guidelines easier to understand.

The plate icon is a colorful circle graph divided into four sections representing fruits, vegetables, protein and grains, plus an additional small circle on the side for dairy.

In introducing the plate icon, First Lady Michelle Obama said feeding our children should be easy, as long as their plates are “half full of fruits and vegetables, and paired with lean proteins, whole grains and low-fat dairy.” 

The image of the plate will no doubt make it easier for both parents and kids to understand balanced nutrition. The symbol also serves as a reminder to control portion sizes and to consider various options for each category.

There are no foods pictured on the plate, just words that represent each food group. On the My Plate website, the USDA provides tools to determine more specific serving sizes and other dietary guidelines.

In a country where obesity and fatal diseases related to unhealthy eating habits are continuously on the rise, is making the guidelines even more abstract a sufficient strategy to address a nation’s nutritional health?

My Plate may offer a more understandable illustration than the previous My Pyramid, but nothing more has been improved. My Plate still keeps the lobbying for food subsidies for the sake of economic gain instead of prioritizing citizens’ health.

Dairy: Since the plate differentiates between fruits, vegetables, proteins, and grains, why aren’t dairy products included with the “protein” group?  After all, dairy contains as much protein as meat, poultry, fish, beans, nuts, and seeds.

Keeping dairy as a separate food group has little to do with the USDA’s concern for calcium intake. Some green vegetables offer just as much calcium as milk yet they remain unmentioned in the generalized vegetable group. If the concerns were truly about calcium intake (rather than political ties with the dairy industry), it would make a “calcium-rich” group and include dairy along with kale, broccoli, brussel sprouts, sesame, quinoa, and other fortified dairy alternatives. Considering that over half of the American population is suspected to be lactose intolerant, is this really in our people’s best interest?

Fruits and Vegetables: The problem is not that Americans lack awareness that fruits and vegetables are healthy. It is that fruits and vegetables compete with cheaper junk food and false advertizing. Many of today’s breakfast cereals, breads, yogurts, spreads and most packaged foods are marketed as health foods despite their content of artificial flavors, preservatives, trans-fats, and copious amounts of sugar. These foods can be marketed as healthy and cheap because they are made with crop subsidies.

As an example, "Total Blueberry Pomegranate Cereal" is positioned as a highly nutritious cereal with the words "100% nutrition," "Blueberry" and "Pomegranate" appearing on the front of the box. While the cereal contains no actual blueberries or pomegranates, it does contain eight different sweeteners (Sugar, Corn Syrup, Barley Malt Extract, Brown Sugar Syrup, Malt Syrup, Sucralose, Molasses and Honey.)

The blueberry-like appearance of small bits in the cereal are made through the use of artificial colors like Red #40 and Blue #2, combined with various oils and sweeteners such as soybean oil and sugar.

Until blueberries are as affordable as the artificial subsidized soybean version , I suspect we won’t see much improvement in America’s health.

A South American friend told me that back home, he would feed his family fruits and vegetables because it was cheaper than McDonald’s. Now living in America, he can only afford to feed his family McDonald’s because it is cheaper than fruits and vegetables.

Grains: The simplicity of the plate icon in comparison to the previous pyramid is much to be admired as well as appreciated for the elimination of the processed flour products that were pictured as examples for healthy grains. However with no images on the plate, there may well be even more confusion over what a healthy grain would be. Some of us might know the difference between whole grain flour and white flour but most of us still mistake servings of cereals such as Total as a healthy whole grain. These cereals may have started as whole grains but have been processed to a point that they no longer offer the body the same nutritional benefits. While cereals and breads might have a place in our diet, they cannot be the only type of whole grain that we eat. We must also incorporate unprocessed grains such as oats, brown rice, quinoa, buckwheat, and the many other grains available.

Fats: Much like the old pyramid, this plate does absolutely nothing towards differentiating between healthier and unhealthier fats.  In fact, on the new plate there seems to be no room for fat despite its vital importance to our health.

When presenting ‘My Plate,’ First Lady Michelle Obama mentioned the importance of increasing access and availability of fruits and vegetables. No specific actions or policies to achieve this goal were mentioned. The USDA says that vegetables and fruits should make up half of our diets but only 1 percent of its food subsidies go to farmers who grow produce. Until unprocessed foods are made largely available, our new colorfully illustrated guideline serve little to no purpose.