A Balanced Food Plate
The USDA replaces the traditional food pyramid with a simple food plate
By Kelli Plasket
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is serving Americans a new plate. To help consumers better balance their meals, the USDA and First Lady Michelle Obama announced on Thursday that the government is throwing out its familiar but complicated food pyramid. The pyramid had been used to represent nutritional guidelines. It will be replaced by a symbol that the USDA hopes is easier to understand: a food plate.
"When it comes to eating, what's more useful than a plate?" Mrs. Obama said Thursday during a news conference unveiling the new icon, called 'MyPlate.' The USDA, which provides nutritional guidelines to consumers, first introduced the food pyramid icon in 1992. The USDA revised the symbol in 2005 to reduce the significance of grains and include exercise. Many nutrition experts had criticized the pyramid-shaped guide. It was too complicated for people to easily understand when making food choices, they said. So the USDA partnered with Michelle Obama and her "Let's Move" campaign to better show consumers how to build a healthy meal. The Let's Move initiative aims to "put children on the path to a healthy future."
"This is a quick, simple reminder for all of us to be more mindful of the foods that we're eating," the First Lady said at the conference. She emphasized the importance of having a kid-friendly nutrition symbol. "[Children] can learn to use this tool now and use it for the rest of their lives," she said.
It's Not a 'Pie' Chart!
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. It illustrates that half your meals should be fruits and vegetables, a little more than a quarter should be whole grains and a bit less than a quarter should be protein, plus a small amount of dairy.
The symbol also serves as a reminder to control portion sizes and to consider various options for each category. Nutritionist Toni Bloom is the co-founder of Funfoodle, which provides hands-on food and nutrition education to kids and their parents. Bloom told TFK that the icon's simple message, such as a clear emphasis on fruits and vegetables, makes it practical and effective for families. "I like how 'clean' the plate is," she said. "There are no foods pictured on it, just words that represent a food group. This subtly suggests that any food can fit as long as it is portioned correctly and is a food that can clearly fit into a food group."
On the MyPlate website, the USDA provides a tool to determine more specific serving sizes based on your age and health. Other dietary guidelines from the USDA's include eating whole grains for at least half your grain servings, choosing low- or fat-free milk and water over sugary drinks; and selecting soups, bread and frozen meals with lower sodium, or salt, levels.
Max- We knew that keeping healthy is the best way to live longer. So we always have some good ways to keep healthy. Like doing some sports and exercises, and some good healthy habits will be good for being healthy. But the most important thing to get healthy is to eat balanced meals. Many peoples’ meals aren’t balanced enough, some eat very many meat and fast foods and some eat very less vegetables. Eating balanced meals can protect us from getting many diseases, from colds to getting a fever, from being fat to getting cancers, that’s why eating a balanced meal is very important! To have a balanced meal, we must eat many vegetables and fruits, and some grains, and a little meat and dairy. If you eat balanced meals and do some exercises every day, you will become healthy very much! |
