OurPlate – Better than MyPlate!

Click to learn how to quickly score meals using the OurPlate Meal Rating Guide.

The U.S. government recently took away its old food pyramid, after using this symbol and its component food groups for decades to summarize (and misrepresent) how Americans ideally should eat. In its place is a new nutritional icon and set of recommendations called MyPlate.

Unfortunately, the new look and health guidance of MyPlate are only a partial improvement on the disastrous approach of the old pyramid and food group thinking that came before it. This outgoing model for optimal eating failed in at least three important ways: 1) it was inconsistent with our best science and growing research into human eating in nature and under artificial influences, 2) it was from the start heavily pressured and corrupted by agribusiness and other interests, and 3) as a policy tool it remained at best ineffectual at countering alarming dietary trends over at least two generations.

Although the new MyPlate recommendations are a step forward in two areas - notably no longer promoting the consumption of sweets and excesses of fats – this new model for nutritional health is largely a repackaging of older and now outdated nutritional ideas and carries forward several important shortcomings and errors from the retiring pyramid and earlier food group model.

Introducing OurPlate…A Better Approach

Click for a full-size copy of the OurPlate Campaign Graphic.

To correct crucial flaws in the U.S. government’s new MyPlate approach, HumanaNatura is today introducing its alternative, 100% natural, and science-intensive OurPlate healthy eating campaign, targeting health-seeking people and communities around the world. The campaign’s orange icon above graphically summarizes essential  dietary practices from HumanaNatura’s Natural Eating technique, the first of four science-based health techniques that comprise comprehensive natural health system.

HumanaNatura’s OurPlate approach is different in critical ways from the new government MyPlate model, and represents a better and more natural alternative to ensure lifelong dietary health. With OurPlate, a broader range of available health science is employed than the U.S. government appears capable of at present, leading to a superior, simpler, and optimally healthy approach to daily eating. HumanaNatura’s OurPlate model will no doubt raise the ire of the traditionally-minded and food provision industries who have had their way on this social policy for so long, but OurPlate represents a substantial step forward from MyPlate and other modern approaches to eating – and is a gateway to other important natural health lessons and techniques to increase our modern well-being and quality of life.

As you can see from the OurPlate icon (click here to enlarge), HumanaNatura’s model for optimal eating begins with a green foundation, reflecting both our long-evolved human diet in nature and our best available science for healthy nutrition today. Because this vitamin, mineral, and fiber-rich green platform is so important to our natural health, we recommend that at least one-half of our food volume each day be in the form of raw vegetables, including leafy greens, root plants, and other veggies that can be eaten raw (a simple but powerful indicator that a food is likely natural to us). By contrast, the government’s new MyPlate model advocates half this amount and contains no requirement for raw edibility, thereby encouraging unnatural, poorer quality, and reduced vegetable consumption overall.

In addition to a large and primary dietary foundational of raw vegetables, HumanaNatura adds two (and just two) other food categories to complete the OurPlate nutritional model: 1) lean animal foods and raw nuts sufficient to meet our natural protein needs, and 2) adequate raw fruits to meet our remaining calorie needs (best judged by maintenance of a healthy body weight). For beverages, HumanaNatura encourages drinking pure water, including warm or cool teas and infusions without added sugars. As we will discuss more in a moment, you will note there is no place on HumanaNatura’s OurPlate for familiar foods today that are still core parts of the U.S. government’s new MyPlate approach. These less desirable foods include grains, cereals, beans, starches and other vegetables that require cooking, and dairy products.

In practice, the easiest and most enjoyable way to use the OurPlate model and move to this naturally complete and optimally healthy way of eating is by turning all our meals into Salad Meals, examples of which are the subject of many of our NaturaLife posts. For most of us, eating naturally the HumanaNatura way and using OurPlate will mean two or three salad meals a day, one or two of them with an animal protein, along with periodic snacking on raw veggies, fruits, and nuts. You can learn more about preparing delicious salad meals and HumanaNatura’s overall food guidelines via the Meals tab above or via the Natural Eating section of our Personal Health Program.

Key Improvements over MyPlate

We’ve included a graphic summarizing the U.S. government’s new MyPlate dietary model, so you can see how it differs from HumanaNatura’s superior  and more natural OurPlate approach. Most immediately noticeable are the MyPlate model’s continued recommendation of two unnatural and generally unhealthy food groups: 1) grains and cereals, which chemically are  undesirably protein-poor and carbohydrate and lectin-rich, and 2) dairy products, which are often high in saturated fats and the troublesome sugar lactose.

As we have suggested, these familiar but nutritionally problematic categories of agricultural foods are not natural to human beings and have been shown to have important side-effects in us, and their continued recommendation by governmental bodies reflects a significant inattention to or omission of modern health-related science. To be clear on definitions, we would add that when HumanaNatura calls these two categories of contemporary food unnatural, we mean that they are not a part of our natural species diet and are not foods we are genetically adapted to thrive on. As foods that are unnatural to us, we should expect and science in fact finds that they have important negative health impacts for us – especially relative to fully natural human foods - and are avoided altogether in the OurPlate approach.

Looking at the recommendations behind the new MyPlate model, the U.S. government’s also encourages the consumption of beans and legumes as part of both their Proteins and Vegetables food groups, despite their unnaturalness for humans and undesirably high sugar and lectin levels. Like grains and dairy products, these common but harmful agricultural foods bring known human poisons and allergens into our daily diet, are not part of our natural human eating patterns, and generally work to reduce rather than improve our health. And, as mentioned before, the government’s My Plate guidelines similarly encourage starches and other vegetables that require cooking, despite having no place in our natural diet, their high frequency of negative health impacts, unnaturally high carbohydrate levels, and inferior nutritional quality relative to vegetables and fruits that can be eaten raw.

See for yourself & get healthier!

You can quickly and simply validate the power, ease, and superiority of HumanaNatura’s more natural OurPlate model by using the approach for even just a few weeks. Like many people using the HumanaNatura natural health system, you will soon find that HumanaNatura and OurPlate offer a far more desirable and health enhancing approach to eating than the governments new MyPlate guidelines and other popular diet regimes. (We recommend that you read Natural Eating for helpful tips before using OurPlate.)

Unlike MyPlate, HumanaNatura’s OurPlate approach for optimal daily and lifelong eating accounts for the full science of our natural human health, assimilates critical health and fitness lessons from pre-agricultural human life (reflecting more than 99% of our species development), and is unadulterated by the unhealthy demands and unexamined beliefs of commercial and traditional political interests. We also like OurPlate’s smarter focus on Our rather than My, reflecting the new modern natural health consciousness that led to HumanaNatura and sees us, first and especially when we are at our best, as a socially cooperative species and all in this together.

Explore HumanaNatura’s science-based guidelines for healthy natural nutrition through the Natural Eating section of our comprehensive Personal Health Program. Learn how to make delicious and naturally healthy salad meals via the Meals tab above or our popular article Perfect Salad Meals.  And consider your opportunities for new and far healthier modern life between meals through HumanaNatura’s complete and naturally open-ended system for lifelong and lifewide health and fitness at The Four HumanaNatura Techniques.

Special Note: As part of the launch of HumanaNatura’s OurPlate campaign today and consistent with our health science education and advocacy mission, HumanaNatura calls on scientists from all health-related disciplines and science institutes involved in nutritional and fitness research around the world to join us in challenging and calling for improvements in the latest U.S. dietary guidelines. We hope you will agree that too much is at stake to let these imperfect recommendations hold yet another generation of people hostage to entrenched interests, unaware of their natural requirements for lifelong health and vitality!  – HumanaNatura

HumanaNatura OurPlate Campaign Launch Press Release

Tell your friends about OurPlate & HumanaNatura…promote new health!