For Health, Eat Some Food from Each Group, the USDA's Basic 7 wheel

A full-color U.S. Department of Agriculture chart, catalogued at 1941, divides food into seven wedges around a family walking together under "U.S. Needs Us Strong, Eat the Basic 7 Every Day." Its last line reads "In addition to the Basic 7... eat any other foods you want" (NAID 514288).

The wheel

Seven colored wedges on a black ground make a circle. Each wedge holds drawings of one food group and a short list. At the hub, a medallion shows a father, mother and two children walking side by side, ringed by the campaign slogan. The type is plain, and most of it is a shopping list.

For Health...eat some food from each group...every day!

GROUP ONE GREEN AND YELLOW VEGETABLES... some raw—some cooked, frozen or canned

GROUP TWO ORANGES, TOMATOES, GRAPEFRUIT... or raw cabbage or salad greens

[…]

GROUP SEVEN BUTTER AND FORTIFIED MARGARINE (with added Vitamin A)

U.S. NEEDS US STRONG

EAT THE BASIC 7 EVERY DAY

U.S. GOVERNMENT CHART

IN ADDITION TO THE BASIC 7... EAT ANY OTHER FOODS YOU WANT

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE

Who made it

The chart names the Department of Agriculture and calls itself a "U.S. Government Chart." The National Archives files it in Record Group 44, World War II Posters, as 44-PA-798B (NAID 514288). The archive catalogues it at 1941; the imprint year cannot be read. A one-color twin in brown ink on buff paper, with the same wheel and slogan and no department named, is filed beside it as NAID 514287. In 1943 the War Food Administration reused the wheel in Eat the Basic 7... every day! and a run of "lunch that packs a punch" sheets, one per group.

Advice with an exit

FRAME finds little technique here; the nearest is plain folks, the ordinary family at the hub. The slogan does carry a wartime claim, that the nation "needs us strong," which turns a household's dinner into a contribution to the war. That is the whole of the pressure, and it is light.

The telling line is at the bottom. Having laid out seven groups, the government chart tells the reader to eat anything else he likes. It sets a floor and leaves the rest to the family. The groups are also flexible within themselves: frozen or canned counts, dried beans and peanut butter stand in for meat, and fortified margarine sits beside butter. The chart tells people what to add and forbids nothing.

Other food and health sheets, from 1917 to 1969, are gathered in US public health messaging, 1917–1969.