New dietary guidelines easier to understand, experts say
The big message: Enjoy your food, but eat less.
The USDA has replaced the food pyramid with a plate, in the hope that people will use it to get a better idea of what foods and portions make for a healthy meal.
- Enjoy your food, but eat less.
- Avoid oversized portions.
- Compare sodium in foods like soup, bread and frozen meals, and choose foods with lower numbers.
- Drink water instead of sugary drinks.
- Make half your plate fruits and vegetables.
- Switch to fat-free or low-fat (1 percent) milk.
- Make at least half your grains whole grains.
In its constant effort to get us to eat a healthier diet, the government recently served up a new food guide icon called MyPlate. The colorful segmented dinner plate, which is based on the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, offers a heaping helping of simplicity, an ample side order of practicality and a light dollop of details.
MyPlate replaces the food pyramid graphic that nutritionists found cumbersome and confusing. The new icon is being lauded as serving a better “how to” approach to visualize recommended daily intake of various food groups and being closer to the ideals nutrition experts have been dishing out for decades.
Instead of the pyramid’s stack of building blocks on which we were supposed to base our diets, MyPlate features something almost everyone understands – a plate. It’s divided into four sections, with half of the plate devoted to vegetables and fruits. The other two sections are grains and protein. A circle at the side of the plate is for a low-fat or nonfat dairy product.
“The messages of the food pyramid were too difficult to understand. But, when you look at the plate (icon), the message is clear – half your plate should be fruits and vegetables,” said Christine Zoumas, registered dietitian and nutrition instructor at UCSD Medical School.
The first goal of this new plan is to build the public’s awareness of how important fruits and vegetables are to a healthy diet. Too few Americans eat the recommended daily servings of these nutritious foods, according to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The hope is that with this new icon circulating in the media, consumers will have a quick and easy way of determining whether they are meeting the recommendation for fruit and veggie consumption by taking a quick glance at their plates and the plates of their children and grandchildren.
“Filling half the plate with fruits and vegetables will be a challenge for Americans. We’ve always been a meat-and-potatoes nation. But, if we’re looking at this, it could be a constant reminder to think about fruits and vegetables when eating or preparing meals,” Zoumas said.
The new icon has abandoned some food categories used in the past and uses some different terminology, which may be a bit confusing. Gone are any references to sugars, fats or oils. What was once a category called “meat and beans” is now simply “protein.” Next to the plate is a blue circle for dairy, which could be a glass of milk or a food such as cheese or yogurt.
Also missing in the MyPlate icon is an exercise component, which was represented by a stick figure running up the steps of the 2005 pyramid. Although dietitians acknowledge the value of exercise in a healthy lifestyle, they understand its exclusion in the new graphic.
“The USDA is the Department of Agriculture, not the department of obesity,” said Robert Randolph, registered dietitian with Scripps Health. “For this guideline, they stuck to their goal and focused on nutrition.”
Government food icons haven’t always been up on the latest nutrition science, dietitians say. For example, the original food pyramid (1992) recommended a diet heavy in carbohydrates and made little distinction between healthful whole grains and highly processed items such as white bread. The outgoing pyramid (2005) continued to lump together all types of oils, though some found in plants and fish are now considered good for the heart while others, including trans-fatty acids, can clog the arteries and lead to heart attacks and strokes.
“I’m glad they came up with something different. The original pyramid was not very useful. The 2005 one was even more vague and web-based, so a lot of the population couldn’t get access to it,” Randolph said.
Proportioning food groups on a plate is nothing new to Linda Copp, a registered dietitian and instructor of nutrition at San Diego State University. She’s used this tool with her clients for several years.
“I take a paper plate and we mark it according to how much of these foods they should be eating,” she said. “It’s a simple and easy way for people to understand how their foods should be proportioned.”
But just as no single food menu can please every palate, no one nutrition guideline can satisfy every dietitian. Now that nutrition experts have had a few weeks to try out MyPlate, they offered their likes and dislikes about the USDA’s new plan.
- MyPlate icon is user-friendly.
“The pyramid was all about cups and serving sizes. Now you can just look at the plate (icon) and try to make your plate look like it with half of it filled with vegetables and fruit and then some grains and protein,” Randolph said.
- MyPlate icon is simple.
“A plate is a concept that everyone can understand. Even a child can get a good idea of what we should be eating by looking at the Myplate (graphic),” Zoumas said.
- The new icon emphasizes the importance of vegetables.
MyPlate’s message is clear – vegetables are the foundation of a healthy diet and should fill most of a plate at every meal.
- MyPlate can be personalized.
Dietitians like the fact that you can plug in your height, weight, age and level of physical activity to get your own recommended daily amount for each food group, plus total calories for the day.
- The website
(choosemyplate.gov) offers helpful nutrition tips.
“I thought the tips were well designed with extensive information,” Copp said. “They’re easy to read and visually appealing for the consumer.”
- The site urges consumers to drink water instead of soda.
If Americans would heed this advice alone, obesity and diabetes epidemics would begin to abate overnight, dietitians said.
- The website offers menu planning tools.
A handy list reminds people of the huge variety of items in each food group. The MyPlate list might encourage adventuresome families to try mustard greens, acorn squash or bok choy.
- MyPlate is too simple.
“The pyramid was too confusing, but now I think we’ve gone too far the other way. MyPlate is too simple and doesn’t offer enough details,” Copp said.
- The icon is vague and invites misinterpretations.
“When you look at the plate and see vegetables, some people will think French fries and for protein some think steak,” Zoumas said. “More education needs to come with the plate picture.”
- MyPlate requires access to the website for complete nutritional guidelines.
The plate symbol alone isn’t enough for consumers to determine what to eat. They have to click on each symbol on the website
(choosemyplate.gov) to identify healthful choices. The people who need the most nutritional guidance – the poor and the elderly – are often the ones without computer access.
- MyPlate doesn’t help consumers understand what a recommended portion looks like.
“You tell people to eat 7 ounces of meat and they have no idea what that looks like. They need to be able to visualize portions,” Copp said. “They need to know that a portion looks like a deck of cards for some things or a computer mouse for other foods.”
- MyPlate doesn’t reflect how most of us eat.
“Instead of eating a plate of food divided into four categories, most of us eat combination food. We eat a bean burrito, lasagna or a casserole,” Zoumas said. “It’s difficult to interpret (the guidelines) when we eat this way.”
- The dietary fats information is too limited.
Dietitians said they’d like to see a better explanation of which dietary fats to choose, such as olive oil, and which to avoid, such as trans fats in margarine and deep fried foods.
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