YourPlate

In the beginning of June this year the United States Department of Agriculture released MyPlate, the replacement for the difficult to interpret MyPyramid. The plate is divided into four sections of the various types of food you should be consuming at each meal with a circle (equating to a glass) representing dairy on the side. Pretty self explanatory, right? Half of your plate should be fruit and vegetables, the other half should have a slightly smaller portion of protein in comparison to grains.

As it turns out, making your plate into MyPlate is pretty hard. Americans eat as MyPlate instructs 2% of the time. That's about one week of the year or 21 meals a year. Twenty one of the 1,095 meals we potentially eat each year. NPD deducted this number from the days people reached at least 70% of the daily recommendation of all of the food groups and considered those days to be MyPlate days.

The NPD group reported their finding based off of their National Eating Trends (NET) research. NET research has tracked the eating and drinking habits of US consumers for 30 years by examining two-week food diaries of 5,000 people. There is the potential for error when it comes to self-reported food diaries. Judging by the fact that this research was carried out by a private organization and not done in a clinical setting, people may be less likely to lie about what they eat. However, participants may still underreport how much they eat.

These findings are not all that surprising. The typical American dinner has a vegetable, a grain, and protein. Not only does the typical dinner not include fruit, but it does not include dairy either. It is also uncommon to have vegetables with breakfast. Making the need for following MyPlate more apparent, 65% of the participants in NPD's research are classified as overweight or obese.

On the days that people had a MyPlate day, they were more likely to consume more than 3 meals a day and to weigh less. This shows that following the MyPlate guidelines can help in leading a healthy lifestyle. They also found that people who snacked on fruit, vegetables, and yogurt also tended to have a lower body mass index.

Additionally, there are a few healthy diet tips that are not explicit on the MyPlate diagram. Americans should replace solid fats with oils. You should also try to make half of your grains whole-grains. The goal of MyPlate is for you to enjoy your meals, while eating less and still getting a high nutritional value.

Knowing how little of the time Americans follow MyPlate shows that education is needed. Americans need to be educated on what MyPlate is and how to apply it to their everyday life. With the number of obese and overweight Americans on the rise, education as a tool for intervention has never been more necessary.

Now that you've seen MyPlate try to make it YourPlate. Hopefully it lasts longer than a week.