Is MyPlate Discontinued? The 2026 Transition, Explained
The USDA retired MyPlate.gov in January 2026 — RealFood.gov and an inverted pyramid replaced it. What changed, what survives, and where your MyPlate plan still works, free.
The USDA retired MyPlate.gov in January 2026 — RealFood.gov and an inverted pyramid replaced it. What changed, what survives, and where your MyPlate plan still works, free.
🇺🇸 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines released — MyPlate retired as the federal icon
January 7, 2026 · United States · DGA · MyPlate icon
HHS and USDA released the 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, launched RealFood.gov, and retired the MyPlate.gov website. The new edition leans into protein-rich whole foods — red meat is now named among the recommended proteins — and full-fat dairy, and it replaces the MyPlate visual with an inverted food pyramid.
The interactive MyPlate Plan calculator was removed in the consolidation.
What it means: The plate icon taught since 2011 is no longer the federal symbol. Our MyPlate Plan calculator continues the 2020–2025 MyPlate-format plan, unchanged.
Sources: dietaryguidelines.gov (USDA & HHS) · realfood.gov (USDA & HHS) · USDA + HHS press release (Jan 7, 2026) (USDA)
The full analysis
January 7, 2026 was the biggest single day in US nutrition guidance since 2011: HHS and USDA released the 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, launched RealFood.gov as the consumer site, and retired MyPlate.gov — the old address now redirects to the new home. The interactive MyPlate Plan calculator, the food-group pages, the portion guides, and the MyPlate Kitchen recipe collection went offline in the consolidation. No federal site has rebuilt the calculator.
The icon change is the visible part: an inverted food pyramid replaced the plate that had been the federal symbol since 2011. The directional shifts matter more — the new edition leans into protein-rich whole foods, with red meat named among the recommended proteins, and makes room for full-fat dairy. Our new pyramid vs MyPlate comparison documents the change side by side.
If you built a plan on MyPlate, nothing about your plan broke. The 2020–2025 Dietary Guidelines — the last edition with MyPlate as its icon — remain a complete, internally consistent framework, and that is deliberately what our MyPlate Plan calculator implements: the same IOM energy equations and USDA Food Pattern tables the federal tool used. We don't silently swap editions; if we ever add a 2025–2030 mode, it will be labeled, not substituted.
What else survives: all 1,072 MyPlate Kitchen recipes with full nutrition data, the food-group and portion education pages, and the printable tip sheets and quizzes teachers used — preserved, maintained, and free. The fuller background lives on What is MyPlate?. Independent and not affiliated with the USDA; we document the guidance, we don't speak for it.
Where you should look depends on what you need. RealFood.gov hosts the current 2025–2030 edition and the government's new tools — it is the authoritative source for the new framework. This site is for the people, classrooms, and clinicians whose plans, lesson materials, and habits were built in the MyPlate format — and for anyone tracking how the guidance itself keeps evolving, here and in What's new.