The Food Pyramid, My Plate.gov, Eat This Not That
Nutritional Strategies Web Letter September 2011
The information age with all of its whizzing new facts has missed the basic need for scientific nutritional information. Factual nutritional guidance is available on the internet, smart phone, food label, or reference books. These places are much more complex than the new messaging on food consumption provided by MyPlate.gov. Why did this happen?
A little history will be necessary to understand this development. In 1988 the adoption of the infamous food pyramid occurred. The food pyramid ideology was the development of Washington DC politicians and the food industry. Obesity rates at that time were flat, but heart disease was becoming an alarming trend. As a way to address this trend, an old unverified study that suggested heart disease was the result of fat intake was used as the basis for the food recommendations of that time. If one notices the composition of the food pyramid, it will resemble this no fat or low fat hypothesis.
The unfortunate outcome of this ideology and the food pyramid was a belief that a person could consume all the fat free food they desired and suffer no consequences. Indeed, this is what has happened and continues to happen unabated to this day. Obesity, heart disease, and diabetes have become epidemic since 1988. Even more alarming is the trend of obesity and chronic disease in young people.
With this looming public health disaster the Washington DC politicians led by Michele Obama began to work with the food industry on a better way to help people understand portion control. The portion control hypothesis must also include the low/no fat hypothesis. The result of their work is the My Plate.gov recommendations. The My Plate.gov recommendations are no different than the recommendations of the food pyramid. The ONLY difference is the manner in which the information is delivered.
The Food Pyramid requires that one be able to read. The My Plate.gov uses pictures and colors to convey portion and type of food necessary for daily consumption. The reasoning of the Washington DC politicians and the food industry is obesity is the result of not being able to read. To mitigate the inability to read by the population of the United States and thus the scourge of obesity, the idea to provide nutritional information in the form of colored pictures was created. The only way the government recommendations for food intake is to be understood and applied by this country was to ‘dumb them down’.
This one size fits all approach has been the mainstay of nutritional theory since the 1980s. Even this new approach that assumes the plate is a color coded food puzzle will be one more failure to communicate vital information. Biomedical research, anecdotal research, and the ‘just look around’ research indicates the complete and utter failure of the government and food industry collaboration on food recommendations. Humans are all different, and this means an individual approach to nutrition and lifestyle are needed.
Blessings,
Nadine Campbell RN
September 20, 2011
| 
