The Latin American Diet Pyramid is a nutrition guide that was developed by Oldways and scientific advisers from the Harvard School of Public Health, the Baylor College of Medicine, and the Latin American Summit Scientific Committee in 2005.
This pyramid is based on two distinct historical periods of the culinary evolution of the peoples of Latin America.
The first period describes the dietary traditions of regions inhabited primarily by three high cultures of aboriginal Latin Americans: the Aztec, the Inca, and the Maya.
The second period describes the dietary traditions that emerged following the arrival of Columbus, at about 1500, to the present time.
They are closely related to traditional areas of maize, potato, peanut, and dry bean cultivation in the Latin American region.