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A food guide pyramid is a tool intended to help people make daily dietary choices that will lead to greater short-term and long-term health. For many years, the best known pyramid was the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food Guide Pyramid. Released in 1992, it replaced the Four Food Group Plan, which had been criticized for placing too much emphasis on high-fat, high-cholesterol foods that came from animals.

The Food Guide Pyramid was divided into six food groups. Foods to be eaten in the greatest quantities were at the base, while foods to be consumed in lesser quantities were near the top. Americans were urged to eat a given number of servings from each food group based on a diet between the ranges of 1,600 calories and 3,000 calories.

However, in 2005, the USDA issued a revised version of the pyramid called MyPyramid. This new food guide pyramid incorporates knowledge about nutrition that has been learned since the early 1990s. It also encourages regular physical activity as an essential part of any healthy dietary regimen.

The new approach forsakes the “one size fits all” approach of the old pyramid and instead urges people to tailor their diets to their individual needs. This is accomplished through an interactive approach in which people are asked to visit the agency’s Web site and use tools to build a personalized diet based on information that the person enters, such as age, gender and level of physical activity. After the information is entered, MyPyramid calculates the right types of food and amounts for each person.

Other differences between the Food Guide Pyramid and MyPyramid include:

• The individual food categories in MyPyramid are color-coded: Orange for grains; green for vegetables; red for fruits; yellow for oils and fats; blue for dairy; and purple for meats, beans, fish and poultry. Each food category is represented by a vertical bar on the pyramid shaded in its corresponding color. The thicker the bar, the more food should be consumed from that food group. The original Food Guide Pyramid maintained horizontal levels on the pyramid for each group.
  
  
• Whereas the Food Guide Pyramid made its recommendations in “serving sizes” (e.g., 4 to 6 servings), MyPyramid makes its suggestions in precise amounts (e.g., 2 cups or 6 ounces). Despite the change to specific amounts, many current food guides and information sources still refer to serving sizes.
  
  
• An illustration of a person running up the stairs of the pyramid has been added to MyPyramid. This figure is intended to represent the recommendation that people engage in physical activity every day.

The USDA food pyramid is not the only such tool available to people seeking to build a healthier diet. Other food pyramids also exist that emphasize healthy eating plans for specific types of diets. These are focused on ethnic diets (e.g., Asian, Latin American and Mediterranean pyramids), narrow diets (e.g., vegetarian pyramids) and diets established by organizations (e.g., pyramids established by the Mayo Clinic or the Harvard School of Public Health).

These food guide pyramids often differ in some specifics. The food groups may be categorized differently and the serving sizes may differ from pyramid to pyramid. However, they all share common themes. For example, most pyramids emphasize diets rich in fruits, vegetables and whole grains and low in saturated fats, trans fat and cholesterol. In addition, people are urged to limit consumption of salt, sweets and alcohol.

The pyramids also emphasize limiting portion sizes and total calorie consumption while including regular physical activity in one’s daily routine.

The United States, Mexico and Panama are among the countries that use a pyramid shape to convey their dietary recommendations. Other countries use alternative methods – for example, the United Kingdom and Costa Rica use a plate symbol and South Korea uses a pagoda.