Nutrition experts at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) in conjunction with colleagues at Harvard Health Publications have unveiled the Healthy Eating Plate, a visual guide that provides a blueprint for eating a healthy meal. Like the U.S. government’s MyPlate, the Healthy Eating Plate is simple and easy to understand—and it addresses important deficiencies in the MyPlate icon.
“Unfortunately, like the earlier U.S. Department of Agriculture Pyramids, MyPlate mixes science with the influence of powerful agricultural interests, which is not the recipe for healthy eating,” said Walter Willett, Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition and chair of the Department of Nutrition at HSPH. “The Healthy Eating Plate is based on the best available scientific evidence and provides consumers with the information they need to make choices that can profoundly affect our health and well being.”
Perhaps Harvard’s most dramatic departure from the USDA’s pro-agribusiness My Plate is the complete absence of dairy products! It seems almost unpatriotic or blasphemous to suggest that Americans should not consume dairy products for strong bones and teeth after years of propaganda from the Got Milk? advertisers. It seems that Harvard just kicked the dairy industry to the curb. In it’s place, Harvard’s Healthy Eating Plate recommends replacing the dairy with such calcium dense things as Bok Choy, Soy Milk, Collards and Beans.
Learn about optimal healthy eating at our Plant-Based Nutrition 101 page.
