Choose Real Food

Many of us know the USDA Food Pyramid and a few of us are becoming familiar with their new program MyPlate.  Unfortunately the new improved MyPlate is still lacking something vital.  It doesn’t distinguish between the low value of processed food products and the high value of real foods.

Using MyPlate you could eat Hamburger Helper, canned green beans, canned peaches, a glass of skim milk and have a reasonably balanced plate.  Likewise you could have a delicious homemade meatloaf using grass-finished beef, cauliflower mash, spinach salad and small dish of seasonal fruit drizzled with yogurt. Proportion wise your plate is no different from the first meal. Do you begin to see the problem?  According to MyPlate these choices appear equal and they are decidedly not.  I love this image by Adam Fields, which sums up my feelings pretty accurately.