For as much criticism as the food pyramid gets these days, you’d think today’s diet recommendations would be dramatically different. But they’re not. The food pyramid is still very close to the diets most dieticians in most developed countries recommend. There’s a weird conspiratorial mindset people get around diets for some reason. I don’t get it.
Most breakfast cereals have tons of sugars added. The top part of the food pyramid—the smallest area—is for foods with added sugars. The food pyramid never justified eating a few bowls of Cap’n Crunch for breakfast, though that seems to basically be what people accuse it of.
The bottom layer was literally called the "Bread, Cereal, Rice, & Pasta Group" and featured a picture of a bowl of processed breakfast cereal, among other things.
The top layer was "Fats, Oils, & Sweets" and had some white and yellow spots.
Maybe it wasn't supposed to be justifying that, but as an infographic that's what it was suggesting.
Telling people they should be having a lot of cereal and showing them a bowl of cereal (along with saltine crackers) is going to lead them to believe that's healthy. Especially in the 90's when "cereal" for almost everyone meant highly processed breakfast cereals with a lot of added sugars, and there was little awareness with how much sugar was being added to everything.
Telling people to eat a lot of whole grains is entirely different from telling people to eat a lot of, quote: "bread, cereal, rice and pasta."
> There’s a weird conspiratorial mindset people get around diets for some reason. I don’t get it.
I think it's because
1. Diet fads can be extremely lucrative
2. Stuff you put into your body touches on topics of purity and cleanliness, which have always been a big deal to us. Many religions have strong opinions on it, but it probably predates them.
3. Large interest groups do in fact organize to push their products as healthy, or at least less unhealthy. So there is some "conspiracy", both for and against carbs (and protein, and whatever).
Most breakfast cereals have tons of sugars added. The top part of the food pyramid—the smallest area—is for foods with added sugars. The food pyramid never justified eating a few bowls of Cap’n Crunch for breakfast, though that seems to basically be what people accuse it of.