EAT YOUR VEGETABLES: Nutrition & the NC Extension Service

Released by the USDA in 1956, Essentials of an Adequate Diet streamlined dietary recommendations even further, including just four food groups: Milk Group, Meat Group, Vegetable Fruit Group, and Bread Cereal Group.  This simplified line-up also appears in the leaflet Food for Fitness: A Daily Food Guide, published in 1958. These updated nutrition guides not only included information about how many servings should be eaten each day, they defined what, exactly, constituted a serving. The Extension Service eventually made the switch, too, using the Basic Four as a foundation for nutrition advice in publications such as Family Food Conservation Plan for a Year.

While nutritionists based the recommendations provided in Food for Fitnesson scientific fact and even included information about the nutrients contained in different foods, science had become secondary to simplicity as short explanations about a food’s nutritional value replaced earlier guide’s detailed charts about food composition.