What are the food groups MyPlate?

Katerina Kerska, National Center for Health Research

Índice Show

How Does MyPlate Work?
How To Plan Family Meals Using MyPlate
Other Guidelines For Healthy Eating
The Bottom Line
If you are interested in reading more about diet and nutrition, you can check out these articles:
What are the limitations of MyPlate?

An important goal of the U.S. government is to help guide adults and children to be as healthy as possible. One way to do so has been to make dietary recommendations as visual representations of nutrition guidelines. You may be familiar with the “Food Pyramid” or “MyPyramid,” but the most recent diagram is called “MyPlate.” The dietary recommendations are updated every 5 years to keep up with current research and health data. The most recent update of the Dietary Guidelines came out in 2020, and it uses an updated MyPlate visual model.

The 2020 MyPlate model, shown below, shows a plate containing the five food groups (fruits, vegetables, proteins, grains, and dairy) in a place setting[1]. It is designed to help you to visualize how much of your plate should be taken up by a particular food group.

photo from myplate.gov

How Does MyPlate Work?

The MyPlate image is a plate that is divided into four sections, with each section representing how much of each food group you should eat. Vegetables make up the largest section, followed by grains. Together, fruits and vegetables fill half the plate while proteins and grains fill the other half.

It may surprise you that MyPlate does not include meat as one of the 5 food groups. Instead, the category “protein” includes fish, shellfish, eggs, beans, peas, nuts, seeds, and soy products, in addition to meat.

A small blue circle on the side of the plate represents dairy. The latest USDA Guidelines include fortified soy alternatives in this category.

This simple model is designed to make it easy for consumers to see what an ideal meal should look like, without too many restrictive details. For specific food group amount recommendations, refer to the MyPlate website or the full Dietary Guidelines.

Some critics of MyPlate say it shouldn’t include dairy, which they argue is unnecessary for a healthy diet. Critics also say it is important to give information about the size of the plate and the portions because different people have very different ideas about how large a “portion” is.

How To Plan Family Meals Using MyPlate

The nutrition information in MyPlate is based on a set of recommendations called “Dietary Guidelines for Americans[2]. The guidelines provide detailed instructions for planning healthy meals and snacks for all ages and life stages, such as recommendations for women who are breastfeeding or for toddlers. These guidelines are fairly long, but here some key points:

Make half of your plate fruits and vegetables. Try to choose whole or cut-up fruits without added sugars, and vary your vegetables; try different types as well as cooking them in different ways (raw, steamed, roasted, sauteed). However, try to avoid fried vegetables. Try to choose a variety of colors when picking out your vegetables.
Move to low-fat or fat-free dairy options. Lactose-free or fortified soy versions are also recommended.
At least half of your grains should be whole grains. Look on labels for the word “whole”– not multigrain or seven-grain. Brown rice and whole-wheat pasta also count. Try to stay away from grain-based desserts and snacks, such as baked goods.
Vary your protein. Try different types, such as seafood, eggs, beans, unsalted nuts, soy products, lean meat, and poultry.
If consuming alcohol, do so in moderation. Limit your intake to 2 drinks or less a day for men and 1 drink a day or less for women.
Limit added sugars, sodium, and saturated fat.

Other Guidelines For Healthy Eating

The USDA Dietary Guidelines encourage Americans to use MyPlate as a tool to plan healthy meals[2]. They also outline 4 guidelines to “make every bite count”:

Follow a healthy dietary pattern at every life stage. Your eating patterns — what you eat most of the time– are important. Think of how you and members of your family can shift to a healthier eating pattern. The Guidelines give specific recommendations for all ages across the lifespan. The full set of recommendations can be found here.
Customize your choices. Eating healthy can still be enjoyable! The new guidelines provide advice on how to include personal preferences, cultural traditions, and varying budgets when choosing foods to eat.
Eat Nutrient Dense Foods. Nutrient-dense foods are full of vitamins and minerals that promote health. They have little added sodium, sugar, or saturated fats. Examples of nutrient-dense foods are fruits, vegetables, whole grains, eggs, seafood, beans and lentils, unsalted nuts and seeds, lean meat, and poultry. Fresh, unprocessed foods have the most nutritional value.
Limit Foods and Drinks with Added Sugar, Sodium, Saturated Fats. It is recommended that at least 85% of calories come from nutrient-dense foods while no more than 15% come from other sources. Look for ways to make healthy swaps such as water instead of soda or plain, low-fat yogurt instead of full-fat yogurt, or flavored yogurt with added sugars. Many foods such as dried fruits, granola bars, fruit juices, and condiments like ketchup or pasta sauces can often be full of hidden sugars or salt. Take advantage of nutrition labels to help you choose food and drinks that contain less sodium, fat, and added sugar.

For more guidance, the USDA offers the MyPlate.gov website. You can use the website’s MyPlate Tools to create a personalized plan just for you. It also has other resources to help you find healthy recipes, calculate your caloric needs, work within your budget, and learn more about how to maintain a healthy diet. Alternatively, there is now a MyPlate App to help you make healthy choices on a daily basis.

The Bottom Line

MyPlate can be a helpful basic guideline for people of all ages to know how much to eat from each food group, but it’s important to also follow the additional guidelines above for healthy eating. By eating unprocessed, nutrient-dense foods and limiting sugars and saturated fats, Americans at any age can begin forming healthy eating patterns.

If you are interested in reading more about diet and nutrition, you can check out these articles:

Eating Habits that Improve Health and Lower Body Mass Index

Obesity in America: Are You Part of the Problem

Ten Easy Tips to Get Your Family Eating Healthy

The Cost of Obesity: A Higher Price For Women

Is When You Eat Just as Important as What You Eat?

All articles are reviewed and approved by Dr. Diana Zuckerman and other senior staff.

The National Center for Health Research is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research, education and advocacy organization that analyzes and explains the latest medical research and speaks out on policies and programs. We do not accept funding from pharmaceutical companies or medical device manufacturers. Find out how you can support us here.

References

What are the limitations of MyPlate?

Over the years, the guidelines for eating a balanced diet have made many attempts at getting people to eat enough vegetables, fruits, and whole grains without much success. Instead, Americans are gaining weight and moving less. Is MyPlate enough to help change this? Most likely not by itself it won't.

The problem with nutrition is that it's not as simple as "eat this" and "don't eat that." Educating people about good nutrition takes time, and the educational process needs to be individualized for people to listen. Food is a very personal thing with a lot of meaning behind it for many people. There are childhood memories of favorite foods, family recipes, favorite restaurants, and dislikes that all need to be taken into account when you help someone change their eating habits. How can one icon ever do all that?

MyPlate has several limitations when it comes to educating people about a healthy diet. To start with, it shows various food groups that you need in your diet, but you don't necessarily need them in one meal. The meal on this plate is definitely not one that most people have for breakfast. What option do you learn from this if you don't follow what it shows? You also don't usually have fruit on your plate for lunch or dinner so what are you supposed to replace that with? Ideally, lunch and dinner would have half of all of the food from vegetables. That means that you may have a bowl on the side of the plate and some on the plate, not just half the plate full of veggies.

One major complaint regarding MyPlate is the section labeled "protein." In terms of nutrition, it is not accurate to call a food protein. There are six groups that foods are divided into based on the nutrients that they contain. These groups are vegetables, fruit, grains, dairy (milk and yogurt), beans/meats (including fish, eggs, poultry and soy), and fat. There is no food group called protein because protein is a nutrient, not a food. Many people think of meats when you say protein, but that is not the only source of protein. Protein is found in vegetables, grains, dairy, beans, and meats. You eat food to get nutrients; you don't just eat nutrients. The six essential nutrients are protein, carbohydrates, fat, vitamin, minerals, and water. The plate would have been more accurate to say "meat or meat alternative."

Another limitation to MyPlate is that you don't really learn exactly what to eat just by looking at what is shown. When looking at the plate, do you realize that whole grains are the goal? Research shows that whole grains are better for our health and weight than refined grains, and yet the plate doesn't show that. Another missing piece is the kinds and amounts of fat that we need. There are fats that help our health (monounsaturated and polyunsaturated) and fats that harm our health (trans fat and saturated fat), so it can't just be left off of an icon for a healthy diet.

MyPlate is being promoted as the guide for everyone, but it isn't. There has been an increase in the number of people following vegetarian and vegan diets, but this doesn't address their needs. It would have been beneficial to have separate MyPlate icons for them. MyPlate also does nothing to teach people how to lose or control their weight. With a big enough plate and glass, you can follow the icon and still eat too many calories. You can also consume a lot of calories by the choices that you make within each of the groups. For example, you will get many more calories if you have cheese as your dairy instead of skim milk, or high-fat meats instead of lean ones, or canned fruit in syrup versus fresh fruit, and if you add fat to any of the items, your calories can even double!

Finally, by not mentioning sweets, fats, and alcohol, that does not mean that people will not consume them. The "dieting" mentality is often that a food is either good or bad. That would mean that everything on MyPlate is good and anything else is bad. The truth is that most things are allowed in moderation when we are talking about a healthy adult. If someone enjoys their sweets, then the goal would be to help them figure out how to have some without theweight gain or guilt.

The reason for the long list of limitations to MyPlate is because coming up with one icon that teaches everything about eating a healthy, balanced diet is impossible. The question remains whether having an image that gives some information helps or hurts. In the attempt to simplify things, we can sometimes create new problems. Maybe people would be more likely to learn about nutrition if they were told that an icon or image isn't enough to teach them all there is to learn. Or maybe it would help to have each food group have its own image. I think that there will be many more icons in our lifetime. For now, MyPlate is a nice visual that will work best when served with the information on http://www.ChooseMyPlate.gov.