Four Food Groups and Food Pyramid

Four Food Groups and Food Pyramid

1. Significance of the Four Basic Food Groups

The four food groups can be used for the following purposes.

·        Planning wholesome, balanced menus to achieve nutritional adequacy

·        Assessing nutritional status – a brief diet history of an individual can ­disclose inadequacies of food and nutrients from any of the four food groups. Based on the assessment, nutrition education can be given to an individual

2.  ICMR Basic Four Food Groups

According to Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) the nutrients in Basic four food groups are given in table 2.1.

3.  Food Pyramid

The food guide pyramid was intro-duced in 1992 by United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). It is a valuable tool for planning a health pro-moting diet. The food pyramid (Figure 2.2) provides recommendation for the num-ber of daily servings that should be con-sumed from each of the food groups.

Food pyramid clearly represents that cere-als should form the major bulk of the diet followed by fruits and vegetables, pulses, milk and meat products and less amount of sugar and oils. Food pyramid helps an individual to choose favourite foods by incorporating the principles of balance, variety and moderation.

The table 2.2. shows the quantity of food recommended for adolescents.