The Nutrition Pyramid of Priorities

If you’re confused about whether you should be focusing on food groups or calories, or stressing over meal timing or supplements, the nutrition pyramid of priorities is a simple tool that can help you make informed decisions to help support your health goals.

Food Pyramid vs. Nutrition Priority Pyramid

The traditional food pyramid is a simplified nutrition pyramid that focuses on the major food groups. While this model indirectly touches on macronutrient intake and lightly touches on food quality, it misses many other important aspects of nutrition.

Although the USDA’s dietary guidelines, and many other governing health bodies around the world, have replaced the food pyramid with a new model, their model remains focused on the major food groups and exercise, with limited regard for the other aspects of a balanced diet.

Fortunately, a new pyramid model has emerged, known as the nutrition prioritization pyramid, which focuses on the big picture of nutrition for optimizing health, while preserving a hierarchy.

What is the Nutrition Prioritization Pyramid?

The Nutrition Prioritization Pyramid is a tool that highlights the most important aspects of nutrition but strategically prioritizes them using a pyramid model (1).

The pyramid includes all the most important dietary principles, including calories, macronutrients, micronutrients, meal timing, and supplements, while showcasing their relative impact on one another and your overall health.

Although all aspects of nutrition are important, they are not equally important, and by understanding which aspects have a greater impact on your overall health, you can make more informed decisions to support your progress and success.

The 8 Priorities of the Nutrition Pyramid

Here is a detailed breakdown of my version nutrition pyramid of priorities.

1. Consistency

While often overlooked, consistency is the foundation of any healthy diet. Although eating whole foods, the right amount of food, and the right balance of nutrients is important, if not done consistently their impacts are minimal, if any. Adherence and sustainability are two of the most important factors in an individual’s dietary success, therefore, it is important to create a lifestyle, exercise, and healthy eating habits that you can maintain for the long term (1).

It’s important to understand that you don’t need to follow a healthy lifestyle and diet 100% of the time, rather, consistency is created by adhering to the priorities of the nutrition pyramid most of the time.

2. Lifestyle

After consistency, lifestyle is the biggest part of the nutrition prioritization pyramid. Lifestyle includes everything from water intake to exercise, sleep, and stress management, and plays a vital role in your overall health. Even the best nutrition plan will fail if lifestyle factors are not accounted for, improved, and done consistently.

So, before jumping headfirst into a crash diet or the new fad diet, focus on improving your water intake, reducing your alcohol intake, improving your sleep habits, spending more time in nature, moving your body regularly, and creating healthy daily habits you enjoy and can maintain long-term.

3. Food Quality

Put simply, the quality of the food that you eat is the most important food factor in your overall health. Whole foods, including fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, eggs, dairy products, poultry, red meat, seafood, and shellfish, are the most nutrient-dense foods and the ones that should comprise the majority of your diet and food choices.

Not only will prioritizing whole foods ensure you are organically consuming more nutrients and a better balance of macronutrients and micronutrients, but it will naturally impact how much you eat. Whole foods and minimally processed foods are far more satiating and less palatable than processed and ultra-processed foods, therefore, prioritizing your intake of unprocessed and minimally processed foods can help to control how many calories you are consuming without tracking a thing (2).

That said, there is room for everything in a healthy diet, even junk food and empty calories. Therefore, the objective should be to prioritize whole foods most of the time, roughly 80-90%, and indulge the rest of the time, roughly 10-20%.

4. Calories

How much you eat affects everything from your overall performance to health and weight. Being mindful of calorie intake is important to ensure you are not undereating or overeating for your personal health goals. Exactly how many calories an individual needs to consume can vary based on several factors including age, sex, weight, height, and level of physical activity.

For weight-oriented goals, energy balance, also known as calorie balance, is key as it is the primary factor in weight management (3). For weight loss to occur, one must consume fewer calories than they are expending to create a calorie deficit, and for weight gain to occur, one more consume more calories than they are expending to create a calorie surplus.

While calories do not need to be tracked for general health, non-weight-related health goals, or even weight-related health goals, calories are the body’s primary source of energy, and consuming calories is vital for life.

5. Macronutrients

Unlike the different food groups, macronutrients are the building blocks of calories and the human body. Carbohydrates, protein, and fat make up the food that we eat and contain the sugars, starches, fiber, amino acids, and fatty acids our bodies need to operate and function optimally.

Carbohydrates and protein provide 4 calories per gram, while fats provide 9 calories per gram. Carbohydrates play key roles in digestion and gut health, glucose, and insulin action, as well as cholesterol and triglyceride metabolism; protein function as structural components in skeletal muscle, enzymes, hormones, immune factors, transporters, acid-base regulators, and neurotransmitters; and fats support the metabolism of fat-soluble vitamins, cell membrane function, the maintenance of structural integrity of the brain and nervous system, and hormone synthesis (4, 5, 6).

In general, consuming balanced meals with a source of protein, carbohydrate, fiber, and fat can help to ensure you are consuming adequate protein, fiber, and calories to support your health goals. Moreover, specifically tracking macros and manipulating your macronutrient intake can improve body composition and/or performance, however, the exact ratio required depends on a variety of factors including your activity level, exercise style, and personal goals.

6. Micronutrients

The next level of the nutrition pyramid of priorities is micronutrients. Micronutrients refer to all of the vitamins and minerals required for the body to function and include everything from iron and magnesium to B vitamins and vitamin C.

By prioritizing food quality (i.e. eating more whole foods) and macronutrients (i.e. creating balanced meals), you can ensure you are consuming an adequate intake and balance of micronutrients in your diet. While specific situations and health conditions may require tracking or monitoring of specific vitamins and minerals, focusing on the other aspects of the nutrition pyramid is typically a more than adequate strategy for the average person.

7. Meal Timing

When you eat is far less than what and how much you eat. Although nutrient timing can be important for athletes, for the average person meal timing is essentially a non-issue. Whether you want to have a larger breakfast and lunch and a smaller dinner, eat 5 meals instead of 2 meals, or eat later or earlier in the day, as long as you are prioritizing nutrient-dense whole foods, eating balanced meals, and eating enough calories to support your goals, when you eat doesn’t matter.

Food quality is more important to overall health and research has shown that calorie intake is more important than meal timing when it comes to weight loss (7, 8). While breakfast is considered the most important meal of the day and it’s commonly recommended to not eat before bed, it is the overall intake of calories and energy balance that determines whether weight is lost, gained, or maintained, not when you eat.

In the end, it comes down to personal preference, your personal hunger cues, and what makes you feel your best. So, unless you are an athlete looking for every competitive edge you can get, meal frequency and meal timing are far less important than most people think.

8. Supplements

While supplements are one of the most commonly discussed aspects of nutrition, they are the smallest piece of the nutrition prioritization pyramid. Supplements are often said to be the “magic pill” or “silver bullet” of health and weight loss, however, they have the smallest impact on overall health and are meant to be a supplement to a healthy diet and lifestyle, not a replacement for one.

Protein powder, collagen powders, electrolytes, and multivitamins can all be beneficial, however, their effects and impacts will be largely negligible if other lifestyle and dietary habits are not addressed. So, before you run out and buy all of the powder and potions you can find, ensure that you are prioritizing sleep, managing stress, exercising regularly, focusing on whole foods, and eating a balanced diet.