My Plate

I agree. I don't like it.

My take is a "Boooooooo". I think they think most people think Meat when they say Protein.

Infrablue is correct, you can get Protein from Veggies and Grains and Fruit and Dairy.
(It's tough to do in isolation. I had a friend who decided to be a fruitarian, eat only fruits. Right. Then it was pointed out that in a six ounce (170gram) chicken breast there are about 50 grams of protein where in a six ounce banana there are 2. You have to eat a lot of fruit to get enough Protein.)

Anyway, we need to come up with a better chart for them.

Joe(Start your Illustrator Programs now.)Nation

I couldn't figure out where potatoes went on the plate - vegetables, I presume, but I don't think of them in the same way I think of beans and broccoli etc. Oh, wait, maybe it's the catchup on the french fries.

Wherever I saw the "Plate graphic", they explained that people's needs vary and it was just a general type illustration.

Huh.

Yeah, people need food, in a general kind of way.

But you couldn't get complete protein by eating just a lot of bananas.
I know it's not hard to combine non meat foods over the course of a day to get complete protein, but it would be more difficult to do it with just fruit.

Colorful, but $2M??? For that?

I'd have done it for $1M!

If the food pyramid is to be replaced with a plate, I think the USDA should stick with illustrating the traditional food groups and perhaps leaving out recommended portions of each, since people do have different nutritional needs, as osso pointed out.

What I don't get is the exclusion of meats and nuts in favor of the misleading "proteins."

Is this some kind of a vegan conspiracy that's infiltrated the USDA and the Obama admin. to do away with meats??? Hmm. . .

The Original food pyramid program started in the 70's was a good idea, but the last version of it was whack, ruined by the reformers screwing with something that was not broken. Now the government wants to change its whole apprach to teaching what to eat, which throws away all of the previous effort, and will tend to confuse. What the government has done here is to sign on to the latest fad of the nutritionists,but does this mean that they will scrap the "my plate" program when the next one comes along?

The "my plate" idea is actually a blast from the past, when people ate on plates, at set meal times, with all of the food groups. Increasingly people dont eat like that, we snack, on the go. The food pyramid was about servings per day of each food group, which is much more helpful considering how we eat today.

I was wondering is that Dairy a pint of ice cream? I'll put my seal of approval for that part of the depiction then.

It doesn't depict how fats should be considered in the whole shebang.

It seems the USDA is trying to illustrate food groups, so they wouldn't list fats since fats are a nutrient type.

But because they leave out the meats food group in favor of the nutrient type proteins I'm convinced that it's a vegan conspiracy to do away with meat foods!

Ok, we're on top of this. French fries as the main veg, and ice cream as the dairy. Bacon as the protein. Corn syrup as my grain.
So, would you pass me the grapes, I think they need peeling.

This thing is useless without a sheath of instruction, which is naturally not the best thing for a graphic. I take it they mean well.

And green vegetables. Like the pickles on the burger.