The Healthy Food Pyramid

In school, the food pyramid that has been taught offers grains as the largest group, followed by vegetables and fruit split in to the second group, with nuts, dairy and meat following after that. Fats are then the absolute smallest food group so this encourages people to stop eating fat, which can lead to health problems. That appears to be the current approved food guide pyramid but there have been alternatives created intended to be healthier than the standard approved food pyramid. The food pyramid you see in this article is one I created which offers healthier and more important foods in greater quantities to less important, and even harmful food groups. Anything below the red line is necessary and anything above is unnecessary, and in some cases unhealthy.

The standard food pyramid suggests grains should be consumed the most often by humans. Grains are not actually a natural source of food for humans, and most of them are cooked before being consumed. Grains became the main food source of humans 10000 years ago when agriculture began, but before that, they were a nonexistent part of the diet. It is a better idea to place fruit in the largest food group, because it has many nutrients, calories, and both simple and complex carbohydrates including fiber. It is often said that fruit is the healthiest food a human can eat and humans are considered frugivores by some. Fruit is also eaten raw while grains must be cooked so it is obvious which one is a more natural part of the human diet.

Fruit and vegetables in the standard food pyramid are split in to the second tier but there is no reason why you cannot eat more fruit and vegetables than that. Vegetables are rich with nutrients but have much fewer calories than fruit so to get enough calories to function properly fruit must be consumed more often. Many vegetables can be eaten raw and are a natural part of the human diet so they should be consumed often and are very beneficial to health.

Nuts and seeds are actually fruit but they have their own group because they offer mostly protein and fats while sweet fruits are rich in carbohydrates. Nuts and seeds are full of healthy fat and fatty acids and also have one of the best sources of protein. They are very healthy but not eaten in as large of a quantity as other fruit or vegetables.

Legumes are above the red line because most of them are not consumed raw and they are not a necessary food type. They can be sprouted, but then they'd fall more in to the vegetable category. In general they are healthy and contain protein similar to nuts and many nutrients but should not be consumed more than the larger groups and some people do not consume them at all.

Grains are often highly processed, making them unhealthy and removing most of their fiber. I do not recommend that anyone eats grains that are not whole grains, but even then, this group is unnecessary for health and not recommended to be largely consumed. They are however a great source of complex carbohydrates making them ideal to be eaten early in the day. Some people choose not to eat grains at all because they are not a very natural thing to eat but in general, whole grains are not unhealthy.

The miscellaneous group contains anything else that a human would eat, and in most cases they are unnecessary. Or there might be certain situations where eating such things could be beneficial, such as eating meat when you cannot find sufficient plant sources, but that would usually only happen in the winter away from civilisation in some parts of the world.

Overall I think following this food pyramid instead of the official approved one makes much more sense and has a lot more reason to promote health. It also fits in well with what the other great apes are eating and eliminates the foods which are known to cause medical problems. However, this was just a sketchy drawing of it, so the sizes of each group should not be seen as exact.