Background: MyPlate is a tool designed to educate the general US population on how to eat in alignment with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans; yet, there is a lack of data on who has heard of MyPlate over time.
Objective: The objective of this analysis was to examine the prevalence of awareness of MyPlate within the US population and if awareness changes differentially over time.
Design: This study was a serial, cross-sectional survey.
Participants/setting: Three survey waves of data (2013-2018) were used from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey of adults aged 20 years or older (n = 17,023).
Main outcome measures: Percentage of the US adult population who had heard of MyPlate was measured and stratified by sex, age, citizenship status, education, household food security status, income, receipt of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, and receipt of Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) benefits.
Statistical analyses performed: Global Wald tests were used to assess whether prevalence of awareness of MyPlate differed by sociodemographic characteristics. Tests of homogeneity using likelihood ratio tests of nested logistic regression models were used to assess whether differences in awareness of MyPlate by various sociodemographic characteristics changed over time from 2013 to 2018.
Results: Twenty percent (19.5%) (n = 875) of the analytic sample of participants aged 20 years and older had heard of MyPlate in 2013-2014, 24.5% (n = 1,020) in 2015-2016, and 24.6% (n = 1,086) in 2017-2018. Awareness of MyPlate changed differentially over time (P value < .1) from 2013 to 2018 by income, household food security status, and receipt of SNAP benefits, with slower increases in awareness for households with lowest income over time, narrowing of differences in awareness by household food security status over time, and persistent differences in awareness by receipt of SNAP benefits over time.
Conclusions: These results highlight the current low awareness of MyPlate, disparities in awareness of MyPlate immediately after implementation by sociodemographic characteristics, and increases in awareness over time at differential rates within levels of income, food security status, and ever receipt of SNAP benefits. Given that the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2025-2030 are currently in development, new strategies should be considered to disseminate tools that translate the updated Dietary Guidelines in such a way that reach the general population equitably upon implementation within the United States.
Keywords: Dietary guidelines; Dissemination; Equity; MyPlate; Nutrition education tools.
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