John Reid
Writing 150 February 2016
The Unstable Food Pyramid In the seventh grade I took a cooking class where I learned basic recipes and life skills. In this class I had my first introduction to the food pyramid made by the United States Department of Agriculture in 1992 (Godoy). I spent hours memorizing the ins and outs of a pyramid that was supposed to guide my dietary habits and ultimately lead me to a healthy lifestyle. This life tool (known as the food pyramid) showed me how many servings of grains, fruit, vegetables, meat, milk, and sugars I should consume daily. Even now I know that I am supposed to eat oils, sweets, and fats sparingly, and have three to five servings of vegetables each day. A year after engraining these numbers into my brain, I learned that all of my studying was in vain. During my eighth grade year the USDA introduced a new online program called MyPyramid. That program was only used for five years, and in 2010 (before I had even graduated from high school) the USDA slightly modified their food patterns. This is when the new MyPyramid was shaped into the newer and “better” MyPlate. My mind was bewildered as to how there could be so much change in an area that should have remained constant throughout one’s life. I began to wonder to myself “Are the current guides actually helping us, and should we be following them?” In order for the food guides to help us they should be more focused on three things: scientific basis, consistency, and personalization towards the individuals following the guides. The USDA has debated on the topic of nutritional foods and guidelines for the last century. This national debate started when Wilbur Olin Atwater (the first to create a dietary guideline by the USDA) published a bulletin titled “Foods, Nutritive Value, and Cost” in 1894. Atwater’s diet was aimed towards men and suggested that their diet should consist of proteins, carbohydrates, fats, and mineral matters (Atwater 357). Since then there have been over ten different alterations to the nations health guide (Davis and Saltos 38). This averages to a change every decade, but it doesn’t stop there. In the year 1990 the USDA ruled that the United States must alter their guidelines every five years. With all of these guidelines and alterations it is impossible to know which rules will stick, and which will be omitted in the next edition of the rules. Since the very beginning of the rules institution, the USDA has been fuzzy on their guidelines of dietary consumption. The first colored chart was designed by the USDA in 1945 and contained seven main food groups: group 1: green and yellow vegetables; group 2: oranges, tomatoes, and grapefruits; group 3: potatoes, other vegetables, and fruits; group 4: milk and milk products; group 5: meat, poultry, fish or eggs; group 6: bread, flour and cereals; group 7: butter and fortified margarine (U.S. Department of Agriculture). This added three categories to the original guide from Atwater. When I first saw this guide I was shocked and left with many questions. Why are there three groups of vegetables and fruits? Why aren’t there serving sizes? And why does butter and margarine have its own category? This grouping doesn’t seem very logical, but some of those questions can be answered. Historical context makes the guide clearer. When this guide was published, the nation was in the middle of world war two and many foods were in scarce supply, especially butter. With butter being a rarity, margarine was introduced as a cheaper alternative (Godoy). The government and the USDA now needed a good way to promote this alternative. As a promotion and marketing tool they created a new food category just for butter and margarine. That way people could see that butter and margarine were interchangeable. The very first chart introduced by the USDA was a billboard promoting margarine. This a great example showing that the USDA is not concerned about the health of the American citizens; they are more concerned about the production and sales of the crops and goods. Since the time of the very first chart we have come a long way with the help of technology, dietary discoveries, and newer health guides. Even with the new improvements we are still falling short of finding a guide that is suited for everyone. The original food pyramid that we have all come to know and love created in 1992 was not without blemish. This guide put a large emphasis on breads, cereals and pastas with an astounding six to eleven daily servings. It was basically saying that you could eat as many carbohydrates as you wanted, and not suffer any repercussions. Now we can see what has resulted from this. According to America’s Health Rankings, in 1992 when the chart was introduced only 12.6 percent of the adult population was reported to be overweight. Since the food pyramid was introduced, obesity in America has almost doubled. In 2005 when the food pyramid was replaced, the same organization reported that 23.6 percent of the nation’s population was overweight (America’s Health Rankings). Why does this happen? How does an organization whose job is to make America healthier fail to do so? Harvard nutritionist Dr. Walter Willet explains,
The thing to keep in mind about the Pyramid is that it comes from the arm of the federal government responsible for promoting American agriculture. It doesn’t come from agencies established to monitor and protect our health, like the Institute of Medicine or the National Institutes of Health. And there’s the root of the problem—what’s good for agricultural interests isn’t necessarily good for the people who eat their products.” (Willet)
This quote sheds a whole new light on the national health guides. Willet explains that we shouldn’t blindly follow the USDA, but instead we should pay closer attention to the institutions that specialize in the health departments, and not the selling and marketing departments. As the obesity percentage in America continued to rise, the United States government decided that something needed to change. That change resulted in the USDA’s MyPyramid of 2005. The new design angled the pyramid on its side and highlighted it with an array of brightly colored strips running vertically from the top to the bottom (Godoy). A stick figure is jogging up the stairs that are cut into the left side of the pyramid. That’s all, it doesn’t tell you how many servings, or which column is which group of foods. There isn’t a key or a help guide. The only way you can be able to decipher this pyramid is if you have Internet access. This new MyPyramid had an emphasis on exercise, which was one of the plusses. But even with this new focus the obesity rates among adults in the U.S. continued to rise from the previous 23.2 percent to nearly 27 percent (America’s Health Rankings). Realizing the complexity of the previous MyPyramid, the USDA introduced MyPlate. MyPlate (the current USDA guide) is focused on simplicity and portion control. The USDA has come a long way since the beginning, and MyPlate is evidence of that. Its design is a plate that shows the portions of each of the five categories: fruits, vegetables, grains, protein, and dairy. These five food groups are displayed in the creative design of a place setting with a fork on the left, a plate in the middle, and a cup at the top right hand corner. Fruits are colored in red, vegetables in green, protein as purple, grains as orange and dairy as blue. When you look at MyPlate you can see that the plate is split into four sections. At a distance it looks like all four of these categories are all the same size, but when examined closer you can see that vegetables along with grains take up the majority of the plate; fruits and proteins, which are also approximately the same size, take up a smaller portion of the plate. Finally the cup at the top right hand corner of the plate displays the dairy consumption, which is the smallest. This new design helps the public visualize how our actual plate should look. It is an ingenious idea except for one final problem, which is presented in a recent study done by Sarah Haack and Carmen J. Byker. Together these women, Food and Health lab graduates from Montana State University, conducted a systematic review wherein they had thrity-one studies done on the link between knowledge and adherence to the three most recent health guides (Haack and Byker 622). The food pyramid, MyPramid, and MyPlate were the three health guides chosen. Interviewing over a thousand different people around the nation they found that only 30% of these people knew about MyPlate, but 92% were aware of MyPyramid, and 92% were aware of the food guide pyramid. The next topic studied was the adherence to these guides. 85% of these participants knew of the food guide pyramid, but 87% of the previous 85% (that knew of the food guide pyramid) believed in and trusted the nutrition guide to be an accurate representation of what they should be eating. Finally, 25% of the original 85% used that knowledge in meal planning. If this study is an accurate representation of America then that means of the 318 million people that live in the United States, 270 million know about the food guide. Of those people who know about the food guide, 235 million believe and trust the guide and only 58 million used it in food planning. To give you a visual image: if we were to take the population of the state of California (currently 38.8 million), and combine it with the population of New York (19.7 million), and remove those two states from the map, New York and California would be the only states that would use the nutrition guides in meal planning (U.S. Census Bureau). The rest of the United States would generally know about it, but would do nothing with that knowledge. One organization that could greatly help the USDA and their guides is the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Harvard has created food guides that are similar to the USDA’s with the same structured pyramid and plate, but they are very different in what makes up those plates and pyramids. Take for example the USDA’s Food Pyramid and Harvard’s Healthy Eating Pyramid. Right there in the title you can tell that Harvard is hinting that the USDA’s guides aren’t necessarily healthy for you. The basics of Harvard’s Healthy Eating Pyramid, as well as the other food guides that they have produced, have stayed constant. Harvard’s main focus has, and always will be, exercise and portion control of the right types of foods according to your weight (Healthy Eating Plate, and Healthy Eating Pyramid). In the Healthy Eating Pyramid you can see at the bottom of the pyramid, pictures of weights, running shoes, sports equipment, a scale, and a dinner plate with an assortment of foods. This section of pictures is the largest group and is the main focus of the pyramid. The rest of the pyramid is filled with seven different food groups, a recommended amount is given for each food group, as well as certain foods within that food group that are healthiest. Finally there are pictures of a wine glass and a bottle of multi vitamins off to the side, with commentary beside them saying that we should drink alcohol in moderation and that multivitamins should be taken for most people. The Harvard food guides do it right. Their food guides are science based, although their presentation may change, the main diet and food groups stay the same and they recognize that it’s not a one-size fits all guide. In a study done by Harvard with the comparison of these two guides, they found that people who followed the USDA food guides were an average of 7% less likely to develop a chronic disease. Those who followed the Harvard food guides were an average of 15.5% less likely to develop a chronic disease (Healthy Eating Plate, and Healthy Eating Pyramid).This shows that there are healthier guide alternatives than the ones presented by the USDA. It also shows that we would be better off exploring other resources rather than blindly following the main source. If the USDA wants to have a lasting impression on American diets they need to do three things. First they need to be more concerned about the health of the average American, instead of corporate “agriculture interests”, as Dr. Willet so clearly pointed out. Second they need to stop changing the food guidelines (Willet). The USDA needs to partner up with more scientific health agencies like the before mentioned Harvard T.H. School of Public Health or the National Institutes of Health. This will finalize a food guide that will last throughout the ages and doing this will create the consistency and more scientific background. Finally in order for these guides to serve their purpose there can’t be a one serving fits all, there has to be personalization. The USDA needs a wake up call from the American people saying that we are all different and our bodies and digestive systems react differently to foods. With these three things in place in a final guide, parents and children across the nation can begin to gain trust in their diets again. Those that follow these food guides will no longer have to question whether or not this is good for me. There will be no more changes in pyramids, pictures or plates. Obesity rates will shrink in size and knowledge of this guide will expand. America will finally find the right guide, that will lead them to the happy and healthy lifestyle that we all dream of.

Works Cited
America's Health Rankings. "United States Obesity: 2015." 2016.Web. <http://www.americashealthrankings.org/print/createreport>.
Davis, Carole, and Etta Saltos. "Dietary Recommendations and how they have Changed Over Time." (2014): 38. Print.
Godoy, Maria. "Wheels, Pyramids and Plates: USDA's Struggles to Illustrate Good Diet." January 16, 2016 2016.Web. United States National Archives. February 8, 2016 <http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/01/13/462821161/illustratin g-diet-advice-is-hard-heres-how-usda-has-tried-to-do-it>.
Haack, Sarah A., and Carmen J. Byker. "Recent Population Adherence to and Knowledge of United States Federal Nutrition Guides, 1992-2013: A Systematic Review." Nutrition reviews 72.10 (2014): 613-26. Print.
"Healthy Eating Plate & Healthy Eating Pyramid." 2011.Web. Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health. <http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-eating-plate/>.
U.S. Department of Agriculture. "Basic 7." 1943.Web. U.S. Department of Agriculture. February 10 2016 <http://www.archives.gov/global-pages/larger-image.html?i=/publications/prologue/2011/summer/images/whats-cooking-foodgroups-l.jpg&c=/publications/prologue/2011/summer/images/whats-cooking-foodgroups.caption.html>.
United States Census Bureau. "State and County QuickFacts." QuickFacts.Census.Gov. 2014.Web. February 8 2016 <http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06000.html>.
Willet, Walter C. "Chapter 1: Building a Better Pyramid." Eat, Drink and be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating. New York: Free Press, 2005. Print.