A macrobiotic diet is a fad diet based on ideas about types of food drawn from Zen Buddhism. The diet tries to balance the supposed yin and yang elements of food and cookware. Major principles of macrobiotic diets are to reduce animal products, eat locally grown foods that are in season, and consume meals in moderation.
A food pyramid is a representation of the optimal number of servings to be eaten each day from each of the basic food groups. The first pyramid was published in Sweden in 1974. The 1992 pyramid introduced by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) was called the "Food Guide Pyramid" or "Eating Right Pyramid". It was updated in 2005 to "MyPyramid", and then it was replaced by "MyPlate" in 2011.
The Mediterranean diet is a diet inspired by the eating habits and traditional food typical of southern Spain, southern Italy, and Crete, and formulated in the early 1960s. It is distinct from Mediterranean cuisine, which covers the actual cuisines of the Mediterranean countries, and from the Atlantic diet of northwestern Spain and Portugal. While inspired by a specific time and place, the "Mediterranean diet" was later refined based on the results of multiple scientific studies.
In nutrition, diet is the sum of food consumed by a person or other organism. The word diet often implies the use of specific intake of nutrition for health or weight-management reasons. Although humans are omnivores, each culture and each person holds some food preferences or some food taboos. This may be due to personal tastes or ethical reasons. Individual dietary choices may be more or less healthy.
A plant-based diet is a diet consisting mostly or entirely of plant-based foods. Plant-based diets encompass a wide range of dietary patterns that contain low amounts of animal products and high amounts of fiber-rich plant products such as vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts and seeds. They do not need to be vegan or vegetarian, but are defined in terms of low frequency of animal food consumption.
The Healthy Eating Pyramid is a nutrition guide developed by the Harvard School of Public Health, suggesting quantities of each food category that a human should eat each day. The healthy eating pyramid is intended to provide a more sound eating guide than the widespread food guide pyramid created by the USDA.
Vegetarian nutrition is the set of health-related challenges and advantages of vegetarian diets.
A healthy diet is a diet that maintains or improves overall health. A healthy diet provides the body with essential nutrition: fluid, macronutrients such as protein, micronutrients such as vitamins, and adequate fibre and food energy.
A food group is a collection of foods that share similar nutritional properties or biological classifications. Lists of nutrition guides typically divide foods into food groups, and Recommended Dietary Allowance recommends daily servings of each group for a healthy diet. In the United States for instance, the USDA has described food as being in from 4 to 11 different groups.
A diabetic diet is a diet that is used by people with diabetes mellitus or high blood sugar to minimize symptoms and dangerous complications of long-term elevations in blood sugar.
Protein combining or protein complementing is a dietary theory for protein nutrition that purports to optimize the biological value of protein intake. According to the theory, vegetarian and vegan diets may provide an insufficient amount of some essential amino acids, making protein combining with multiple foods necessary to obtain a complete protein food. The terms complete and incomplete are outdated in relation to plant protein. In fact, all plant foods contain all 20 amino acids including the 9 essential amino acids in varying amounts.
The Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension or the DASH diet is a diet to control hypertension promoted by the U.S.-based National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services. The DASH diet is rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and low-fat dairy foods. It includes meat, fish, poultry, nuts, and beans, and is limited in sugar-sweetened foods and beverages, red meat, and added fats. In addition to its effect on blood pressure, it is designed to be a well-balanced approach to eating for the general public. DASH is recommended by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) as a healthy eating plan. The DASH diet is one of three healthy diets recommended in the 2015–20 U.S. Dietary Guidelines, which also include the Mediterranean diet and a vegetarian diet. The American Heart Association (AHA) considers the DASH diet "specific and well-documented across age, sex and ethnically diverse groups."
The Mediterranean Diet Pyramid is a nutrition guide that was developed by the Oldways Preservation Trust, the Harvard School of Public Health, and the World Health Organization in 1993. It summarizes the Mediterranean Diet pattern of eating, suggesting the types and frequency of foods that should be enjoyed every day.
The Latin American Diet Pyramid is a nutrition guide that was developed by Oldways and scientific advisers from the Harvard School of Public Health, the Baylor College of Medicine, and the Latin American Summit Scientific Committee in 2005. It is a tradition-based diet that suggests the types and frequency of foods that should be enjoyed every day.
MyPyramid, released by the USDA Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion on April 19, 2005, was an update on the earlier American food guide pyramid. It was used until June 2, 2011, when the USDA's MyPlate replaced it. The icon stresses activity and moderation along with a proper mix of food groups in one's diet. As part of the MyPyramid food guidance system, consumers were asked to visit the MyPyramid website for personalized nutrition information. Significant changes from the previous food pyramid include:
Vegan nutrition refers to the nutritional and human health aspects of vegan diets. A well-planned vegan diet is suitable to meet all recommendations for nutrients in every stage of human life. Vegan diets tend to be higher in dietary fiber, magnesium, folic acid, vitamin C, vitamin E, and phytochemicals; and lower in calories, saturated fat, iron, cholesterol, long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin D, calcium, zinc, and vitamin B12.
MyPlate is the current nutrition guide published by the United States Department of Agriculture's Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, and serves as a recommendation based on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. It replaced the USDA's MyPyramid guide on June 2, 2011, ending 19 years of USDA food pyramid diagrams. MyPlate is displayed on food packaging and used in nutrition education in the United States. The graphic depicts a place setting with a plate and glass divided into five food groups that are recommended parts of a healthy diet. This dietary recommendation combines an organized amount of fruits, vegetables, grains, protein, and dairy. It is designed as a guideline for Americans to base their plate around in order to make educated food choices. ChooseMyPlate.gov shows individuals the variety of these five subgroups based on their activity levels and personal characteristics.
The history of USDA nutrition guidelines includes over 100 years of nutrition advice promulgated by the USDA. The guidelines have been updated over time, to adopt new scientific findings and new public health marketing techniques. The current guidelines are the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2020–2025. The 2015–2020 guidelines were criticized as not accurately representing scientific information about optimal nutrition, and as being overly influenced by the agricultural industries the USDA promotes.
The planetary health diet, also called a planetary diet or planetarian diet, is a flexitarian diet created by the EAT-Lancet commission as part of a report released in The Lancet on 16 January 2019. The aim of the report and the diet it developed is to create dietary paradigms that have the following aims:
