Latin American Diet Pyramid

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The Latin American Diet Pyramid is a nutrition guide that was developed by

This pyramid is based on two distinct historical periods of the culinary evolution of the peoples of Latin America.

The first period describes the dietary traditions of regions inhabited primarily by three high cultures of aboriginal

The selection of these peoples and of these time periods as a basis for the design follows from these considerations:

• A consistency with patterns of other healthy population groups of the world;
• Availability of data describing the character of
  food consumption
  patterns of the areas at that time; and
• The convergence of the dietary patterns revealed by these data and our current understanding of optimal nutrition based on world-wide epidemiological studies and clinical trials.

Variations of these diets have traditionally existed in other parts of Central America, South America, the Caribbean, and the southern edge United States. For the purposes of this research, the aforementioned regions are considered as part of Latin America. They are closely related to traditional areas of maize, potato, peanut, and dry bean cultivation in the Latin American region.

Given these carefully defined parameters of geography and time, the phrase traditional Latin American diet is used here as a shorthand for those traditional diets of these regions and peoples during two specific time periods that are historically associated with good health.

The design of the Latin American Diet Pyramid is not based solely on either the weight or the percentage of energy (

• National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse. National diabetes statistics. NIH publication 02–3892. 2002. Fact sheet. http://www.niddk.nih.gov/health/diabetes/pubs/dmstats/dmstats.htm. Accessed April 4, 2002. Archived May 17, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
• Latino Nutrition Coalition
• Latin American Diet Summit Consensus Statement