The Atlantic offers an excellent conversation-starter video (5 minutes) about the myths of nutrition education that have been perpetuated throughout public schooling for decades. A food media literate person investigates the Food Pyramid with such questions as: “Whose interests are served?” “What is left out?” “Whose voices are excluded?” and “At what cost? And to whom?”
Remember learning about the food pyramid in health class? As it turns out, it was based on a lot of misinformation about nutrition. In this episode, we explore the source of some of the lasting myths about healthy foods and fitness and the new science shaping health class today.
The political pendulum continues to swing with the more recent Choose My Plate guidelines. Watch a unique health care-ful presentation below that explains it. Then apply the same media literacy questions to Choose My Plate: “Whose interests are served?” “What is left out?” “Whose voices are excluded?” and “At what cost? And to whom?”
You can learn more about applying media literacy principles to food media from Dr. Vanessa (Domine) Greenwood’s course Food Media Literacy.