whole foods eating, heritage based

i like the oldways vegetarian pyramid, and I use it plan meals.

Love love love the Mediterranean style diet.

Nice! I would say that I pretty much eat to the standard Med style pyramid because it appeals to my taste buds.

I have a vegetarian pyramid on my fridge, and one as my wallpaper on my computer. However, I have small kids who I am teaching as well, and I find it helpful to encourage them to try to eat from all the groups each day.

ie- (I say to my six year old "I see you want chips for lunch, maybe we will have hummus with our chips for our protein choice")

(that is a good breakfast of toast and milk, what do you think we could add from the fruit or vegetable group?)

This is kind of cool. Thanks for sharing!

Thanks for the link you're up to 4 flags now so post should disappear soon.

The flagging abuse is so irritating.

Has anybody drawn up what the "pyramid" for the SAD looks like?

I'm always confused about what precisely the SAD is supposed to be. Wiki claims 50% carbs (which are supposedly too low, whatever), 15% protein, 35% fat (supposedly too high), but of course the bigger issue is lots of sugar and HFCS, refined grains, and saturated fats, and allegedly 75% of restaurant meals from fast food (which doesn't say how many overall meals from fast food or anything about overall content of fruits, veggies, or whole grains (in the form of high fiber cereals or packaged whole wheat breads, although I will assume the answers are all depressing).

I always have a disconnect between this and my own idea of the traditional American diet, which is how I grew up. Like I've posted before, I'm a more adventurous eater and far less likely to used canned foods than how I grew up, and probably eat a lower percentage of carbs and more/a wider variety of veggies. (We always ate lots of fish because of where we lived at various times and because my dad loves it and likes to fish, and I know that's somewhat less usual.) But basically the traditional American dinner I grew up with was meat, potatoes (sometimes something else in this vein, but potatoes were the most common), and vegetables. Sometimes also a salad (with bottled dressing) and sometimes also bread of some sort. Adults had water to drink (or maybe some kind of booze) and kids had milk.

Lunch was a sandwich on whole wheat bread and/or some kind of soup (I know not everyone did whole wheat, because I pointed out to my mother at one point that our bread was "wheat" and brown, but not "whole wheat" (we'd learned about this in school), so we might as well get white like various friends of mine, after which she switched to a brand that had actual "whole wheat." Special breakfast was bacon and eggs or ham and eggs, and/or pancakes (one of my dad's specialties). Weekday breakfast was cereal (hot or cold) and fruit (I have always hated cold cereal and at some point started skipping breakfast or having a banana and toast).

Soda was a special treat, fast food (or going out at all) was a special treat, dessert was a special treat or something simple like pudding. Afterschool snack would be cheese and crackers or maybe a cookie, if there were some (cookies being mostly based on the chocolate chip package recipe).

Not amazing, but not what the SAD seems to be understood as today, and other than the wheat bread thing my family wasn't one of the weird strict ones that people thought of re the families that had only health food.

It seems like things are different today, although it's also always too easy to get into "kids today" mode.

Hmm, interesting, although not surprising.

Some kind of change since the late '70s (although MJ's blaming advertising seems weak to me, since I recall quite a bit of advertising back then), but I guess I still don't think the SAD is really a thing. Part of the problem is that what's been happening seems to be the US (and other developed nations or whatever we are supposed to call them) are going away from having any kind of traditional diet at all. It's having a traditional diet that enforces communal food choices, defines what you think of as a proper dinner and the rest, and thus results in people eating foods like vegetables (in addition to them in fact being tasty, of course) and generally making less convenient choices, I think. I can nitpick the diet I grew up with, but I know it's one reason I find it so difficult to understand how people don't know what normal healthy eating is--I have a template in my head that isn't all that different from MyPlate, even if I personally think some of the details (like high fiber cold cereal being some kind of super healthy ideal breakfast or skim milk being always better than full fat or a continued overinvestment in being anti fat in general) are questionable.

There's quite a lot of diversity even now in how Americans eat. Most people I know don't eat the SAD, I don't think (and not coincidently the subculture I'm in is a lot thinner than the US average, although not thinner than what I recall from the '80s for a much broader swath of the country).

I like these pyramids and how they show the variety that is available to provide excellent nutrition. It's all about wisdom and balance. It's we who determine what we become.