Who Sold Us This Idea? · the food pyramid

Who sold us the food pyramid?

My whole life, there’s been consciousness about people’s weight, and all we do is talk about weight and health, but the whole country has been getting bigger and bigger and more unhealthy.

I always like to say, “Look at a photo of Woodstock and look at a photo of Coachella.” Everyone at Woodstock was eating pot roast and smoking cigarettes, and they look absolutely amazing. Everyone at Coachella is thinking about their diet.

In 1977 the government told Americans to eat less fat. In 1992 it drew a pyramid with bread at the bottom. Follow who sold the idea, how it was marketed, and how much heavier the country got after.

Who thought of the idea?

Slide through time, drag the blue idea across the map, or use the arrow keys. Each bubble is sized by the figure in the chart below at that point: a ~ marks an estimate and ? means no data yet. Lanes are kinds of institutions. Solid lines hand the idea straight to the next carrier; dashed lines are a push in parallel.

?

one adult in a hundred with obesity

How fat the country got

Obesity is a body mass index of 30 or more, from measured height and weight. Ages 20 to 74 is the only age group CDC can compare across every survey back to 1960. The curve bends after the late 1970s, when the low-fat advice began. That timing fits the story; it does not prove it. Between surveys the bubbles and meter hold the last measured figure.

The average adult

Mean measured weight of adults from CDC exam surveys, plotted at the middle year of each survey period. Points through 1999-2002 are ages 20 to 74. The two latest points are ages 20 and older, which adds people over 75, who weigh less on average, so the switch slightly lowers the later figures. Weight alone does not show what caused the gain.

And yet we live longer

Period life expectancy at birth from national death records. The drop in 2020 and 2021 came with the COVID-19 pandemic. Lifespan rose the whole time weight rose, so this chart is a check on the story, not support for it: diet is one of many things that move it.

The advice came firstObesity among adults 20 to 74 barely moved from the early 1960s to the late 1970s, 13.4 percent to 15.0 percent. The Dietary Goals came in 1977 and the first guidelines in 1980. By 1988 to 1994 it was 23.2 percent, and by 1999 to 2000 it was 30.9. The timing fits. It does not prove the cause.

Fat got blamed, sugar paidThe sugar industry paid for the 1967 Harvard review that pointed at fat and did not disclose it. One of its authors, Mark Hegsted, then strongly backed the 1977 Senate goals that turned the idea into national advice.

Heavier and longer-livedThe average man gained about 33 pounds between the early 1960s and today. Life expectancy rose from 69.7 years in 1960 to a record 79.0 in 2024. Whatever the pyramid did to our waistlines, it did not stop that climb.

The case for the defense

  • Almost nobody ate the pyramid. Very few Americans ever followed the pyramid or MyPlate, so the advice may explain less about what people actually ate than this page implies. PolitiFact (2025), source 25
  • Keys gets blamed for more than he said. He argued for swapping saturated fat for other fats, not for fat-free food, and his defenders say the Seven Countries Study did not drop inconvenient countries. The famous six-country graph was a separate, earlier paper. Pett, Kahn, Willett and Katz white paper via Oldways; University of Houston
  • The sugar papers can be overread. Critics say the letters show no dishonesty and the review made few ripples. The authors themselves say they never claimed it set national policy. FoodNavigator (2016); Kearns, Schmidt and Glantz reply
  • Fat really is calorie dense. Fat has twice the calories of protein or carbohydrate, which is the core of the case that low-fat advice was reasonable. Marion Nestle, quoted by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (2002), source 29
  • We got heavier and still live longer. Life expectancy hit a record 79.0 in 2024 while about 40 percent of adults had obesity, so the weight chart is not a body count. CDC NCHS

2 more defenses are being sourced before they go up.

Sources

  1. Wikipedia, History of USDA nutrition guidelines
  2. Nursing Clio, Butter and the History of U.S. Dietary Guides since 1894 (2019)
  3. NPR The Salt, Illustrating Diet Advice Is Hard. Here's How USDA Has Tried To Do It (2016)
  4. Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, centennial history of food guides
  5. VERIFY via 13News Now, the history of USDA food guides
  6. Cato Institute, Why Does the Federal Government Issue Damaging Dietary Guidelines?
  7. Wikipedia, Lipid hypothesis
  8. Seven Countries Study, History
  9. Wikipedia, George V. Mann
  10. University of Minnesota, Ancel Keys obituary (2004)
  11. University of Houston, Engines of Our Ingenuity No. 2469: Ancel Keys
  12. Kearns, Schmidt and Glantz, Sugar Industry and Coronary Heart Disease Research, JAMA Internal Medicine (2016)
  13. University of California, UCSF unearths sugar industry's role in shifting national heart disease focus (2016)
  14. NPR via KPBS, 50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists To Point Blame At Fat (2016)
  15. Wikipedia, John Yudkin
  16. Montana Public Radio, Sugar vs. Cholesterol: John Yudkin vs. Ancel Keys (2015)
  17. DietaryGuidelines.gov, History of the Dietary Guidelines
  18. D. Mark Hegsted, his account of the Dietary Goals, via Food Politics
  19. Oppenheimer and Benrubi, McGovern's Senate Select Committee Versus the Meat Industry, American Journal of Public Health
  20. Agri-Pulse, Marshall Matz on the history of the Dietary Guidelines
  21. Education Week, U.S.D.A. Unveils Updated 'Food Pyramid' (May 6, 1992)
  22. Associated Press via University Daily Kansan, Agriculture Department alters food group recommendations (April 29, 1992)
  23. International Journal of Health Services, on industry pressure and the 1991 pyramid withdrawal
  24. St. Petersburg Times, The million dollar pyramid (April 30, 1992)
  25. PolitiFact, The history of the food pyramid and MyPlate (2025)
  26. Tedium, the history of SnackWell's (2019)
  27. Wikipedia, SnackWell's
  28. Wikipedia, Gary Taubes
  29. Center for Science in the Public Interest, Nutrition Action rebuttal to Taubes (November 2002)
  30. Wikipedia, MyPlate
  31. Manufacturing.net, The History of USDA Nutrition Guides (2015)
  32. Perkins Coie, 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans: Regulatory Update and Key Changes (2026)
  33. Fill Your Plate, on the 2025-2030 guidelines and the new pyramid (2026)
  34. Yale News, Unpacking the new dietary guidelines (2026)
  35. BakeryandSnacks, US Dietary Guidelines sideline MyPlate in favor of inverted food pyramid (2026)
  36. FoodNavigator, US Dietary Guidelines sideline MyPlate, with related coverage (2026)
  37. Oldways, on the Pett, Kahn, Willett and Katz white paper defending Ancel Keys
  38. FoodNavigator, Sugar review: Rewriting history to expose a non-existent conspiracy (2016)
  39. Kearns, Schmidt and Glantz, reply to critics of the sugar papers (PMC)
  40. CDC NCHS, Health E-Stat 111: overweight, obesity and severe obesity among adults, 1960-1962 through August 2021-August 2023 (2026)
  41. CDC NCHS, Mean Body Weight, Height, and Body Mass Index, United States 1960-2002 (Advance Data 347)
  42. CDC NCHS, Anthropometric Reference Data for Children and Adults: United States, 2015-2018
  43. CDC NCHS, FastStats: Body Measurements (August 2021-August 2023)
  44. CDC NCHS, Mortality in the United States, 2024 (Data Brief 548, 2026)
  45. CDC NCHS, Health, United States 2016, Table 15: life expectancy
  46. CDC NCHS, Health, United States 2020-2021: life expectancy table
  47. NCHS National Vital Statistics Report 50(6), Table 12, via lifeexpectancy.org
  48. CDC NCHS, Mortality in the United States, 2020 (Data Brief 427)
  49. CDC NCHS, QuickStats: Life Expectancy at Birth, by Sex, 2019-2022
  50. Health, United States 2019, Table 4 (mirror copy)
  51. NPR, Coke Funds Exercise Research That Plays Down Role Of Sugary Drinks (2015)
  52. AJMC, Coca-Cola Funds Science to Promote Exercise as Solution to Obesity Crisis (2015)
  53. Chronicle of Philanthropy, Coca-Cola nonprofit pays for research refuting soda-obesity link (2015)

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