American Food Pyramid

60 grams of protein is pretty low...I'd say that's pretty minimal. The RDA for protein is a minimum to avoid protein deficiency, which is a thing. It's not even close to overkill. If you're losing weight and/or active, more is recommended as it preserves lean mass and when you're active substantially aids in repair of broken down tissues.

4 oz of chicken (which isn't a lot of chicken...about 1/2 a breast at most) has around 35 grams of protein...more than 1/2 of the 60 grams.

In general, I find the food pyramid or myplate to be adequate, but minimal in most of their suggestions.

There is no current American food pyramid, and I don't buy into any conspiracy theories about the pyramid that was, except I do think it was originally light on vegetable requirements and heavier on grains because they were focused on cheaper items.

The current one (MyPlate) doesn't try to say how many cals one should eat as a one-size-fits-all prescription, although it has suggestions for those on different calorie levels and a calculator similar to that on MFP. I did it, and it tells me I should eat 2000 for maintenance (which is consistent with what other calculators say with the same inputs).

It then suggests servings of various food groups in a way I find unhelpful, but someone with a bad diet and little knowledge about food. I think the recommendations for veg are way low, but given how few veg the average American eats I get they are trying to work with them, and I think recommending "protein foods" (a category separate from dairy, which can be a great source of protein) in oz rather than grams (although it does recommend leaner proteins) is silly in that obviously different sources have different cals and protein grams.

I didn't see a gram protein recommendation on MyPlate, or a specific calcium amount and am pretty sure that wasn't on the old pyramid either. I suspect you are talking about RDA, and RDA isn't especially high for protein at all (it's commonly recommended to have more if one is concerned with muscle building, maintenance when losing, when aging, and if an active person, such as someone who does a lot of exercise). As for calcium, I have no special knowledge, although the amounts recommended of various micros are supposed to be sufficient so that 95% of people won't be deficient or some such. Some may be fine on less. But no, I doubt it's crazy high and would suggest comparing US calcium recs to those in other countries if you think ours may be extra high (I don't know what the comparative amounts would be).

I'm not a fan of it. I think the government should probably get out of the nutrition recommendation business seeing as they have a poor track record of making good, nutritionally sound, scientifically backed recommendations.

whoami67 wrote: »

I'm not a fan of it. I think the government should probably get out of the nutrition recommendation business seeing as they have a poor track record of making good, nutritionally sound, scientifically backed recommendations.

If the average person actually followed the old food pyramid or MyPlate, a lot of people would be better off...it's not the recommendations that are the overall problem, it's that people in general don't remotely follow those recommendations. It's not perfect by any means, but for something that is supposed to cover a huge population, it's reasonably good...if people actually followed those recommendations.

vapianogirl2553 wrote: »

So I have a desk job and eat about 1,700 can't a day sometimes closer to 2,000 I like veggies, fruit occasionally I drink homemade chi lattes to get 8 ounce of milk I do meat and have no restrictions at all

60g of protein is only 240 calories. If you're eating 1700 cals it shouldn't be a struggle to fit that in. Is it possible you're not logging your calories correctly?

The Dutch have the Schrijf van vijf (disk of 5)
The biggest part form fruit and veggies (green), followed by bread, grainproducts and potatoes (orange). Water, coffee and tea (blue) and dairy, fish, meat, nuts, pulses and eggs (pink) follow, and then fats on bread and for cooking (yellow). Considering only dinner is cooked traditionally, and dairy and bread play a big role for other meals this makes a lot of sense. Actually, this is also how I mostly eat, though dairy has a much lower importance for me overall.

vapianogirl2553 wrote: »

So actually I've been researching this and the standard dietary advice is pretty flawed.Big AG has a lot of say in the US also 2,000 calories is not right for most people. Right now I'm hovering around 1,600 and 2,000 and I don't push myself to eat because the app says so actually by dinner I know I'll catch up. Intuitive eating is actually very important for my body type and so is cutting back on days I do nothing. Been sneaking some vital proteins and soymilk and Greek youghrt into my breakfast and swapped all sweets for Luna bars. If I must eat a sweet I try to make sure it has some protein. Some days I really don't eat as much but I majorly upped my morning and overall protein intake. Loving the changes I am seeing with more protein. Getting the recommended DVs is really stressful and eating so many calories isn't going to always happen for me especially on desk days so I just look more to the macro ratio s that sweating DVs or calorie intake. I'm a small person I don't need as much as the avarage American. Also I sit a lot 😔. The American dietary are insanity and have far to many carbs and grains. There is no safe amount of added sugar imo

FWIW, the 2000 calories in US guidelines is not supposed to be some kind of universal right number of calories, it's just a reference number used to calculate some comparatives for things like food-product labels. The USDA doesn't think all of us need 2000 calories exactly, and in fact has many tools for estimating calorie and nutritional needs in a more individual way. Some of us need more than 2000 calories (to maintain weight), some need less.

As just one example, they have a calculator for suggested nutritional values, based on sex, age, weight, height, lactation status where relevant, and activity level:

https://www.nal.usda.gov/human-nutrition-and-food-safety/dri-calculator

FWIW, it suggests 2110-2424 calories for me at female 66, weight 128, 5'5", depending on whether I pick "active" or "very active" (I suspect I'm in between their two definitions). That's actually reasonably close for me, for maintenance . . . when many other calculators are not. (Go figure.)

It suggests a carb minimum of 237g (at active), which is pretty consistent with where I've eaten for the 6+ years I've been maintaining weight so far. (I tend to average around 225g-ish carbs.) I get that some people do better with fewer or more carbs than I do, but I don't think there's anything inherently awful about the USDA recommendation, though low-carb is really touted these days in popular media.

For my tastes, the calculator above still lowballs protein, based on most recent research (especially research on older folks like me). USDA suggests 46g, which seems very low to me. (I routinely eat 100g+, as a vegetarian, from food.) For protein, this is IMO more current:

https://examine.com/nutrition/protein-intake-calculator/
https://examine.com/guides/protein-intake/

And this is highly relevant for older people:

https://www.jamda.com/article/S1525-8610(13)00326-5/fulltext

You mention that you swapped all sweets for Luna bars, and that any added sugar is not safe. You know that the brown rice syrup and cane sugar syrup in Luna bars are added sugar, right?

I guess whether those count as sweets is subjective, but they seem like sweets to me. I don't see that as a problem however: I intentionally put blackstrap molasses in my oatmeal every day, and that's an added sugar (lots of nice micros, though, like potassium and iron). I also eat Yasso Greek Yogurt Bars often as a frozen treat (they're sweetened with added sugar, which I prefer to artificial sweeteners on a taste basis, personally), and have chocolates, cookies, etc., occasionally.

I don't see a reason, personally, to get excited about added sugars, as long as I'm hitting/exceeding my macro/micro targets, plus eating boatloads of varied, colorful fruits and veggies. I couldn't fit in massive amounts of added sugars, at appropriate calories, and hit my nutritional goals; but I figure that as long as I keep getting good results at the dentist, there's no particular worry about the added sugars I do eat. After all, once the digestive process gets at them, the sugars from those yummy fruits and veggies are biochemically identical.

I pretty much feel the same way about grains, too, though I don't eat many of those, either: There's nothing wrong with them IMO, I just prefer to spend my calories on other things, for some combination of nutritional and taste-preference reasons.

Though I don't take it as gospel (obviously, from what I wrote above), there are bunch of other useful things at the US government nutritional sites, IMO, for those who dig past the superficial levels (and ignore some of the blogosphere's misrepresentations). Another thing I've found particularly helpful are their "fact sheets for professionals" on various nutrients and supplements, especially the ones on vitamins and minerals. Here's an example:

https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminA-HealthProfessional/

Those types, in particular, are really pithy and IMO easy enough for a reasonable intelligent consumer to understand. It's been a particularly helpful source, for me, when I wasn't sure whether I might be (yes, really) exceeding a sensible level of some micros. (I have to be careful with brazil nuts; I could easily eat those babies by the handful daily . . . and maybe poison myself, as a result. 😬)

The link below has a list of all the fact sheets, but some are out-links to other sources, not necessarily as good IMO as the vitamin/mineral ones like the one I linked as an example.

https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/list-all/

That Examine.com site has some really good free evidence-based articles about nutrition and supplements, too, and they tend to be a bit more current, a bit less conservative than the US recommendations.

https://examine.com/

Both the Examine and "for professionals" US government sources tend to be excellent about linking the studies that are the basis for their recommendations, too.

I don't think everyone needs to geek out about this stuff as much as I maybe do, but since you mentioned researching, it sounded like you might have some of that tendency, too.