What are Staple Foods?

balanced diet by knowing which other foods contain the nutrients you need. By the end of this course, you will know exactly which foods to eat if you are on a restricted diet.

There are some things that really don't qualify as being part of a balanced diet. These are things like simple sugars or table sugar, sources of cholesterol, high-salt foods, and alcohol. You can eat a healthy diet without eating any of these things, and eating a large quantity of these items is not healthy for you. None of them except for perhaps small amounts of cholesterol are needed in any type of diet.

The food pyramid replaced the "four food groups" in 1992; in 2005, this was replaced by a program called "My Plate". These were designed to help people make good food choices. They are similar, but some nutritionists did not like the fact that the pyramid had a hierarchy where people thought some foods were better than others. Figure 1 shows the food pyramid, and figure 2 shows the MyPlate used today to help people have a balanced diet:

Figure 1. Food Pyramid

Figure 2. MyPlate

Some of the My Plate images have fruits and vegetables separate, while others put them together into one group and indicate that you should eat this section the most. Oil, sweets, and other fats should be eaten sparingly. As mentioned, you do not need any type of simple sugars in your diet as long as you get other carbohydrates.

WHAT ARE STAPLE FOODS?

In the United States, we don't often think of staple foods. In most parts of the world, however, staple foods are very important. A staple food is usually a grain of some type consumed in larger quantities than most other foods, mostly because it is inexpensive and readily available. The most important thing staple foods provide is energy or