According to WebMD the Mediterranean diet is the healthiest in the world. There is a lot of overlap between that diet and the broad recommendations of the old food pyramid. Both recommend the bulk of your calories come from fruits, vegetables and grains while limiting dairy, meat and sugar. So if the health messaging is more or less strong, why does it get so much hate?
in the states at least, the food pyramid was created by people who were being paid by agriculture lobbyists. they said look, here in america we’re good at growing corn and wheat, so can you tell families to eat more of them? the pyramid is born. the fact is america is made up of people from all different backgrounds and you couldn’t possibly make one food pyramid that matches everyone’s health needs.
The quality of foods in the food pyramid that people have access to is probably the biggest reason? People eat bread that is basically sugar as opposed to less tasty but more fibrous and nutritious options 🤷🏼♂️
I think it’s worth it to note that the Mediterranean diet isn’t absolutely the healthiest diet in the world; rather, it’s the healthiest diet that’s been studied so far because of its ease of implementation in randomized studies (biggest one being the PREDIMED study).
Not sure about others, but I started to hate/ignore it purely for it’s corrupted inception. Too many certain food group’s lobbyists influenced it. How true it may or not be…not sure, but I wouldn’t base my eating on anything the USDA recommends solely anyhoo. They always either seem behind the times at best, or not working in our best interest at worst.
Big food funded that pyramid. Remember the GOT MILk Ads? We were brainwashed that our bones would turn to dust without the calcium from 4 plus cups of milk. Today we Now know bad milk is for our digestive system and that it causes inflammation
Namely because it is now considered wrong - recommended too much grain and too much meat and dairy. The new “my plate” is better as it recommends a full half of your plate be produce, about a quarter whole grains, and a quarter a healthy protein. However, it still recommends a serving of dairy with every meal and doesn’t draw a difference between a meat like pork bacon and turkey.
People have also begun blaming the wrong pyramid for the amount of Americans overweight. Personally, I don’t think most Americans were following the pyramid in the first place, so I don’t think it’s the cause. It’s interesting to note that Japan’s current eating guideline, the ‘spinning top’, still recommends that grains make up the bulk of your diet. So, another point that grains don’t necessarily make you fat (presuming the Japanese are following the recommendations).
Personally, I mainly use the Harvard Healthy Plate, which is extremely similar to the My Plate, but with a few important distinctions like recommending much more limited dairy for adults (it does recommend more for children) and recommends you never eat deli meats . (The only big disagreement I have with the Harvard Healthy Plate is that it recommends not eating (white) potatoes in any form (from what I can tell, this is because people tend to add lots of unhealthy fats to potatoes). Sorry, I love potatoes too much and I think they can be prepared tastily without frying them or adding lots of butters and creams.)
Harvard Health also has a pyramid that it recommends you use to do grocery shopping (as it’s easier to “see” the whole diet in the pyramid form than in the individual plate form).
If you look through different government’s recommendations, they vary a bit by what’s available and some slight differences. (For instance, Kenya focuses more on getting people to eat healthy starches and vegetables, and recommends protein in the form of beans, nuts and seeds 4 times a week, and meat such as seafood, insects, or poultry only twice a week). However, pretty much everyone agrees broadly you should be eating a balanced diet that includes a variety of whole grains, produce, proteins in the form of beans or white or blue meats (poultry or seafood), drink water, exercise, and limit ultra-processed foods, added sugars, deep fried foods, butters, trans fats, and red meats.
What a concept it would be if every body itself had a different set of restrictions to follow for diet, and that’s why personal nutritionists exist. The food pyramid in and of itself is a fallacy that’s led to unhealthy eating habits for a long time, this is why a nutritionist who know your goals weight height body type metabolism bmi etc guides you very specifically towards that goal, because each person is different and each body is actually different. So while one diet may be “the best” for a majority, it also is not realistic to assume it is the best for all or few considering each persons portion limits will always be different based on the set factors a nutritionist would take into account. Taking a food pyramid extremely to heart would be one’s first mistake in trying to achieve the perfect balance in one’s own body, unless that pyramid was specifically tailored to said person, then it would be useful. But a broad food pyramid is exactly that, broad- leaving room for one’s own specifications.
Pyramid enabled schools to serve cheap nutritionally deficient meals while teaching the eating habits common to obese people today. Grains are easy to store and heavily subsidized and manipulated by governments and lobbyists, so usually the cheapest option.
At 40, I finally learned how to eat for weight management and performance. 50% of my calories from lean meat, eggs , Greek yogurt, or cottage cheese all the time. Adjust remaining 50% complex carbs and fat proportional to my goals. Leafy green veggies like broccoli every day. Fresh fruits and nuts in the morning oats.
The pyramid I grew up with did not teach me this. Internet forums did. It works for me.
Because processed foods particularly grains and sugars were a big part of it. Also, dairy was recommended where the majority of people world wide have varying degrees of lactose intolerance.
Edit: Was developed during a time of food scarcity as well. Intended to get the maximum calorie amount to the general population, not as an optimal diet standard for an individual.
The food pyramid was always misleading and not very intuitive.
It placed refined grains alongside wholegrains (white bread vs wholemeal)
It doesn’t have an easy way to signify that you don’t actually need much protein, or that some fats are useful to the body, or that certain fruits and vegetables aren’t as nutritious as others.
the notion of a “mediterranean diet” as being among the healthiest is just a colonizing way of promoting a very specific eurocentric pattern of eating on top of the rest of the world (do note that despite the “mediterranean” encompassing asia minor, north africa and the levant the mediterranean diet is characterized by the foods consumed in the european regions). the mechanisms by which this specific eating pattern are quite vague, have never actually been throughly proven and even then the “mediterranean diet” doesn’t really have a crystal clear definition which is really characteristic of the mediterranean as a whole, it’s just an amalgamation of a couple of southern Europe foods melded in with other parts of the unscientific nutritional dogma
individuals from some parts of the mediterranean are among the healthiest in the world for other reasons than their diet, especially because they live in developed regions with many other quality-of-life enchancing characteristics (healthcare, social security, water and air cleanliness, large family support networks…). any mostly unprocessed eating pattern from anywhere else with appropriate conditions for a good variety of crops and livestock (pretty much anything in equatorial/tropical/subtropical climates) will produce equally good results
There’s an aaas review of the process used to generate the nutrition guidelines in the us, and it’s not very complementary.
Even today’s guidelines aren’t based on good science, and the food pyramid was worse.
Our food pyramid is a very slippery slope, where most exist on the slippery side. Why else would we have so many overweight and so many Type 2 diabetics, me include? Clearly this is not rocket science.
Because some people are actually dumb enough to believe people most follow it and blame it, but in reality the average American eats lots of high fat & sugar junk like fast food, pizza, potato chips, ice cream, and soda etc instead.