Is the Eatwell Guide still appropriate for the UK?

Abstract

A national food guide for the UK, providing food based dietary guidelines was first issued in 1995. It was last revised and published as the Eatwell Guide in 2016. The Guide is a pie chart indicating the proportions of foods from different food groups that should make up the ideal diet from a health perspective. The number of segments for the pie chart, the names of the food groups that comprise those segments and the list of individual foods that fit into the wider food groups was in essence decided in around 1995 and have remained essentially unchanged since then. The 2016 edition of the guide - the Eatwell Guide - was the first to employ optimisation modelling to calculate the angles of the segments of the pie chart. This was a significant improvement to the scientific basis to the guide. But still the Eatwell Guide leaves much to be desired and it is time for its revision. This review paper outlines the aims of the guide, provides a brief history of the Eatwell Guide, outlines its strengths and weaknesses and suggests some ways by which the Eatwell Guide might be improved.