The Food Pyramid-Reliable for Healthy Weight Loss?

Since 1992, a lot of controversy has surrounded the USDA Food Pyramid, despite its many valuable features related to healthy weight loss. In 2005, various attempts were made to explain its healthy weight loss guideline, but what is the real scoop today?

The Food Pyramid was initially constructed in order to give people a strict guideline to follow throughout their weight loss program. Various visuals and texts were included to explain what foods should be taken daily and which should not for optimum healthy weight loss.

One example is how the pyramid recommended six to eleven servings of whole grain daily, which is great recommendation for a weight loss plan. Whole grains come with various valuable carbohydrates and fiber, as well as important fatty acids that can all be found in oatmeal, whole grain bread and brown rice.

For vegetables, the recommended amount was three to five servings per day. This also was a great recommendation for a weight loss plan. Leafy green vegetables come with vitamins A and C, while bushy vegetables come with a high amount of iron and calcium. Any vegetable is known to be low in calories and fat, making them essential for optimum weight loss. However, these weight loss recommendations also came with drawbacks.

Due to the amount of research done in nutritional science, a turn of the millennium has come to the conclusion that the Food Pyramid was simply getting outdated as a means for healthy weight loss.

The original recommendations are now being questioned. For example, three cups of whole milk is now said to contain quite a high amount of fat, despite the essential protein, which may not be recommended for optimum healthy weight loss anymore. Although fat is an important part of life, it is still essential to keep its intake to a minimum, if you are seeking healthy weight loss. The pyramid has also forgotten to note that fat comes in various forms.

Basically, the original noted amounts by the pyramid are said to not be the recommended amounts today, mostly for those who wish to achieve healthy weight loss. In actuality, it turns out that the pyramid states the maximum recommendations for each food group, making it practically impossible to achieve healthy weight loss by taking in such high amounts of food.

Because of this, a new food pyramid was introduced in early 2005, in order to truly optimize healthy weight loss for those who seek it. Sadly, this pyramid may be even worse. By using an interactive tool on the USDA website, the recommendations found are very vague and hardly help in constructing a proper weight loss plan.

The lesson to be learnt here is simple: diet and nutrition, specifically for those hoping to achieve healthy weight loss, is a strictly individual affair. It may require particular attention to details of what is consumed, but a proper physician should be contacted for the ultimate weight loss program.