Dietary Advice in Graphics:
1917–2024
Over the past century, the United States Department of Agriculture, foreign governments, the World Health Organization, and many private organizations have provided dietary advice to the general public. Most of the dispensers of advice tried to provide the most scientifically accurate advice possible, though the advice was often influenced by political considerations and organizational philosophies. Advice varied from the very simple to overly and unnecessarily complicated—but none of it has had a major impact on what people actually ate—except children, whose school meals may be dictated by official dietary advice. Family and cultural traditions, marketing, taste, and convenience are all powerful influences to overcome. Still, nutritionists, graphic designers, government officials, and others have sought to develop graphics that would improve the typical diet. But that introduced another complication: is there really a typical diet, especially in the United States, a nation populated by immigrants (excepting, of course, Native Americans).
Federal Government’s Food Guides
How to select foods -
1917 (USDA)
About two million years ago, our ancestors (Homo erectus, the predecessor of Homo sapiens) learned how to control fire and invented cooking. Cooking made food easier to chew, made calories and nutrients more available, required fewer calories to chew and digest food, and killed dangerous microbes. The increased availability of energy allowed for larger, energy-hungry brains that enabled humankind to develop in unheard-of new directions. More digestible food also may have led to smaller colons and dentition.
Basic Seven – 1943
Dietary advice got more complicated after the discovery of most vitamins and the necessities of World War II. USDA nutrition experts divided foods into seven categories because “U.S. Needs Us Strong,” but waffled when it added, “Eat any other foods you want.” Fruits and vegetables constituted two separate categories, potatoes were separated from grain-based foods, and dairy products got their own category separate from meat, poultry, fish, and eggs (and, in small print, dried beans and other protein-rich plant-based foods).
Food for Fitness (Basic Four) – 1956 (USDA)
In 1956 USDA published its Food for Fitness “Basic Four” Daily Food Guide. In the perpetual war between the lumpers and the splitters, this time the lumpers won out. Seven food categories were collapsed into four: milk, vegetables and fruits, meats (again with “alternates” in small print), and bread and cereals. Fats, sugars, and calories disappeared. At the time, relatively little evidence connected diet to the risks of obesity, blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and cancer, so the government’s advice was not controversial.
1st Edition, February 1977 (Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs)
In 1977, the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs’ “Dietary Goals for the United States” advised people to eat less meat, sugar, salt, eggs, and butterfat. That generated a tsunami of controversy and criticism, especially from the affected industries. Other industries welcomed the advice to eat more fruits, vegetables, poultry, and fish. Nutrition scientists and public health officials have been debating the effects of cholesterol, dietary fiber, and different types of fats and sweeteners (natural or synthetic), and the foods in which they are abundant or limited, ever since.
2nd Edition, December 1977 (Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs)
The 1977 Dietary Goals for the United States generated a firestorm of criticism from the cattle and meatpacking industries and Members of Congress from cattle-raising states. That uproar forced the Senate Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs to issue a revised version of the Dietary Goals in December 1977. The main changes included changing eat less meat to eat lean meat; reduce sugar to 10 percent, instead of the original 15 percent of calories; and endorsing higher-fat milk and other dairy products for young children. Whether those changes had any effect on what people actually ate is questionable. What is not questionable is that that was one of several reasons that George McGovern (D—South Dakota), the chairman of the Senate committee, lost his Senate seat in 1980. A second major consequence of the Senate Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs’ work is that the federal government (not just one small committee of Congress) began publishing annual reports titled Dietary Guidelines for Americans, beginning in 1980. All federal nutrition and feeding programs, such as school meals and WIC (Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children), must adhere to specific recommendations in the Dietary Guidelines.
Dietary Guidelines for Americans – 1980 and updated every five years (USDA, HHS)
The controversy over the Senate’s report (which was guided by Harvard nutrition professor Mark Hegsted) emboldened USDA to spearhead the development of the first Dietary Guidelines for Americans in 1980. Mirroring the Senate report, the original Dietary Guidelines report, a slender 20-page document, recommended that people “avoid too much” fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, sugar, and sodium. For the first time, alcohol was included in the government’s nutrition report: “If you drink alcohol, do so in moderation.” The Dietary Guidelines has been updated every five years since 1980, typically with controversy over an external advisory group that has included industry consultants and over the final publication. USDA also provides online dietary advice for vegetarians and vegans, something that would have been unthinkable 50 years ago. Meanwhile, the 2020–2025 edition of the Dietary Guidelines has grown to 164 (full-sized) pages and provides detailed advice about recommended servings of different foods for people following vegetarian and Mediterranean diets.
Food Guide Pyramid – 1992 (USDA)
The government translated the Dietary Guidelines advice into a graphical form, the Food Guide Pyramid. That pyramid—actually a triangle—indicated the relative amounts of different foods that people should consume. Thus Fats, Oils, & Sweets resides at the tip—"Use Sparingly”—of the pyramid, while the bottom, and largest, section encourages people to consume copious amounts of grains. But are unsaturated vegetable oils harmful and to be avoided? And should we be consuming so many servings of grains, which inevitably would be refined (not whole) grains? And are fatty meat and dry beans nutritionally equivalent?
MyPyramid (the “Food Guide Pyramid”) – 2005
After a dozen years, USDA modified the Food Guide Pyramid, but didn’t make it any easier to read and use. And where did vegetable oil and refined sugars (including high-fructose corn syrup) go to?? The stripes are colorful, but unclear that the width represents the recommended numbers of servings. This version was the first to encourage physical activity but probably didn’t get many people running up stairs or jogging.
My Plate (still used) – 2011 (USDA)
The Obama administration, with first lady and nutrition advocate Michelle Obama in the lead, replaced the Food Guide Pyramid with a simple graphic that divided foods into five categories (reminiscent of the Basic Four). It clearly indicates that half the plate should be filled with fruits and vegetables, in contrast to the old Basic Four, in which fruits and vegetables were put into just one of the four categories. Like previous diagrams, this edition doesn’t distinguish between, say, high-fat and low-fat dairy and meat products, though clicking on the online image does provide such advice. And some people argued that the beverage should be water, not dairy.
Dietary Guidelines for Americans – 2025–2030 Edition (USDA, HHS)
The newest edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, released in January 2026, represented a break from earlier editions in two ways. First, it was produced hastily, behind the scenes, and without any opportunity for public comments. Second, and more substantively, it reflected Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s support of meat and opposition to vegetable oils. The Guidelines’ graphic puts meat, whole milk, cheese, eggs, and fish in the most prominent upper-left position. It also emphasizes fruits and vegetables, but deemphasizes whole grains. And reflecting Kennedy’s unfounded view that “seed oils” (soy, corn, cotton, canola) are somehow harmful and not protective against heart disease, those oils are not depicted at all, though olive oil is.
In the wake of USDA’s food pyramids, or triangles if you prefer, many private groups and individuals produced their own variations to, they believed, overcome the flaws in the official pyramids. The Harvard School of Public Health produced a Healthy Eating Pyramid that put meat, butter, salt, refined grains, and sugary drinks and foods up at that tiny tip. And instead of discouraging consumption of all fats and oils, it included polyunsaturated oils (soy, canola, corn, olive, peanut) right along with fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Harvard also allowed for moderate consumption of alcohol (“not for everyone”) and recommended multi-vitamin/mineral supplements for most people plus daily exercise.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest, the nutrition-advocacy group that led efforts to require Nutrition Facts labels on food and to improve the nutritional quality of school meals, produced the first and only actual food pyramid, the Healthy Eating Pyramid. CSPI’s 3-dimensional graphic (printed on card stock) devoted one side each to foods of high, medium, and low nutritional quality and that people could eat “Anytime,” “Sometimes,” or “Seldom.” The fourth side provided information about the pyramid.
Food Guidance in 2050 or 2100
No graphics here, because no one knows what scientific advances will have been made, what people will be eating, and what new graphic devices will be popular. Will cattle, hogs, and poultry be relics of the past, and “meats” be made of plants and fungi or grown from cells in lab-factories? Will statins, diuretics, and semaglutides be engineered into staples? Or will Americans still prefer cheeseburgers from McDonald’s, sugary drinks offered up by Coke and Pepsi, and frozen meals from supermarkets? Stay tuned!
