Food pyramid replaced with healthy food plate

After 19 years, the food pyramid is gone. In its place: a plate.

The USDA's new icon, called MyPlate, is a simple circle split into four sections (red for fruits, green for vegetables, orange for grains, purple for protein) with a separate blue circle for dairy on the side. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack unveiled it at a June 2 news conference alongside First Lady Michelle Obama, explaining that the pyramid had become "simply too complex to serve as a quick and easy guide for American families."

Obama called it "a wonderful, kid-friendly tool" for busy families. "What's more simple than a plate?" she asked. "I'm confident that families will find this useful. They can start using this today." The Obamas, she added, were already implementing it in their own household.

The icon is the visual face of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, and its message goes beyond geometry: roughly half the plate should be fruits and vegetables, grains should skew whole, and protein portions should stay modest. It was also a deliberate communications reboot: the government spent about $2 million developing and promoting the plate, betting that a picture of an actual meal would succeed where an abstract pyramid had failed.

Nutritionists mostly applauded the simplicity, with the usual caveat that no icon can settle the harder arguments about sugar, saturated fat, and portion sizes. But as a piece of design, MyPlate did what the pyramid never could: it looks like dinner.

Ayurveda would find the plate familiar. The traditional Indian thali has always been a visual guide of its own: small portions of many preparations arranged to balance the six tastes, with vegetables and grains anchoring the meal. Long before Washington redesigned the icon, Indian grandmothers were already serving food on a plate that taught proportion.