Why Butter Had Its Own Food Group
Today’s kids have MyPlate . When I was growing up, we learned about the food pyramid . My parents divided food into four food groups . But in hindsight, the nutritional advice gets a little weirder: in the early 1950s, there were seven food groups and one was just for oil.
Welcome to Retro Week , where we light up the flux condenser and introduce you to the 1950s know-how of everything from making casseroles to building fallout shelters to joys for kids to relax and play with trash.
The base seven , as these food groups were called, arose from efforts during World War II to maintain nutritional standards when it took extra effort to diversify your diet. By 1943, when the base seven debuted, rationing was introduced for meat, vegetable oils, butter and margarine, canned vegetables, and dried fruit.
In other words, the purpose of the Basic Seven was different from the cookbooks we’ve seen in recent decades. We are now trying to limit food intake because obesity, heart disease, and diabetes are all too common. Serving sizes are listed in modern cooking guides. But at the time, the government was just trying to make sure people were getting their vitamins.
With this in mind, the base 7 should have been used as a checklist. Each of the seven food groups contains specific nutrients not to be missed: oranges, tomatoes, and grapefruit, for example, are good sources of vitamin C, so they get their own category separate from other vegetables. Butter and fortified margarine contain fat and vitamin A.
After the war, divisions in Basic 7 were less important. This 1954 video gave children a five-finger mnemonic calling for bread and butter as a food group, along with fruits, vegetables, meat and eggs, and milk and cheese. “These are the foods you have to eat every day if you want to be healthy,” advises the film:
In 1956, the USDA decided it was too complicated and simplified the system by dividing it into four food groups that probably look familiar today. (MyPlate divides fruits and vegetables into five.) But even in the 1960s, people still remembered the base seven as a guide to balanced eating. And that’s not a bad plan for today, if you remember that this is a checklist, not a plate to be divided equally among the groups.