The food pyramid was nonsense, regardless of interpretation. No one needs to eat that much grain - and did you forget that it explicitly listed dairy as a nutritional requirement?
I’m not arguing for the pyramid by any means or saying that it wasn’t flawed.
My critique is that instead of poking wholes in it, debating if eggs are or are not healthy and such, we really just normalized massive portions and fried/fast food/soft drinks/sugar in everything/etc. Which completely misses the spirit of what the pyramid was even aspiring to be. We didn’t even consider the pyramid when we made our food choices. We just allowed our gluttony to lead us where it may. That’s nobody’s fault but our own. We knew very well we were making poor choices along the way, but gave in to our desires. (Using “we” as collective US generalization, not trying to speak about anyone specifically, I’m sure someone here has a counterpoint but the obesity stats represent us collectively )
I don’t disagree but I do wonder how much the food pyramid played into developing those habits. Think of all the schools and parents trying to follow it and conditioning their children into eating all that grain and dairy every day. I don’t think it’s solely responsible but I don’t think its effects were negligible.
