Food pyramids were basically made up by farmers, they're not scientific or medical, so yeah they did whatever.
this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2025
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The idea of a food pyramid in itself as a form of simple and accessible public information on nutrition is not a bad one but the quality of the execution depends on whether it is made by nutritionists or by lobbyists
Food pyramid made by Berlin era David Bowie:
It's just capsicum (bell peppers), milk, cocaine and cigarettes (this is somehow four times healthier than the average American's diet)
Of course it is healthier, there's a vegetable in it
When I was in school in Canada, the dairy industry had captured the food pyramid and dairy itself had been made into one of the four main good groups. It was like "remember to drink 8 cups of milk and a brick of cheese every day." Plus there was the eternal mystery of what a "serving" was
Now we have a picture of a plate and it's like "half veggies, quarter grains, quarter protein. Only drink water. Simple enough for ya?"
In the US, Dairy is still a food group.
The government still heavily subsidizes dairy. During the pandemic millions of gallons of milk were being poured down the drain due to schools not providing lunches.
Real grapes of wrath shit.
That's because you have to squeeze eggs out of chickens.
It might have been labeled “eggs and dairy” which is arbitrary but not actually confusing the two
it's not arbitrary to include together the two groups most vital to feeding french people
No no, I've also seen eggs in the dairy section
The Danish version from 1984 published by the cooperative supermarket chain FDB (now Coop), the one I remember from my childhood, had eggs at the top:
Bonus: The Greenlandic food pyramid from 1982 (also by FDB) has seafood in the staple food tier
The Danish one looks similar to the ones I saw growing up in Norway, except I'm pretty sure fish would have been further down. I also wouldn't be surprised if ours we're made by a dairy company. There was such a push to get us to drink milk at school that I remember thinking I was going to get osteoporosis as a six-year-old (my grandma had to reassure me I would be fine as long as I ate enough yoghurt and cheese)
We had those campaigns as well. It was quite alienating to me since I haven't been able to stomach the idea of drinking milk since I was a toddler. The idea that a healthy diet has to include milk still lingers in folk wisdom, it is basically the only source of nutritional calcium that people know about.
The dairy campaign extended into the classrooms (and still do) in the form of a "school milk" scheme in which parents can pay to have a quarter of a litre of milk delivered to their kids at school every day. The scheme was originally started way back in the day to make sure poor city kids at least got some nutrition and ever since the dairy lobby has managed to protect this unique sales channel.
Why's the Greenland one inverted?
The place I got it from didn't say, maybe the idea was to avoid people thinking that the unhealthy foods were the best because they were at the top? It was accompanied by three Greenlandic nutrition tips: Eat less sugar, eat varied and eat Greenlandic.
Eat Greenland Dick
The food posters up in the school I used to go to were all the Eatwell Plate which was the exact same thing but with a pie chart instead of a pyramid.
I was convinced that it also had eggs and dairy as one thing, but I looked it up...
...guess I just misremembered.
well where else are you gonna put them, they're not a vegetable, they're not meat 
Butt vegetable
Vaguely. I think chocolate and lollies was at the top of the pyramid so they're the most important to eat
maybe
Fort_Owl when?
No such Owl any taking such a name will be regarded a fake