A way of eating that leaves out every food of animal origin: meat, poultry, fish, dairy, eggs and honey. People choose it for the animals, for the environment and for their health, and it needs planning, most of all for vitamin B12.

A way of eating that leaves out meat, poultry and fish and usually keeps dairy foods, eggs or both. People choose it for health, ethical, environmental, religious and cultural reasons, and research links it with lower rates of heart disease, mostly from studies that follow people over many years.

A patient handout from the American College of Lifestyle Medicine that pictures a meal made only of whole plant foods: fruit and vegetables, whole grains, and legumes, nuts and seeds, with water to drink and herbs and spices for flavor. It is a picture of the College's dietary position rather than a diet with rules of its own, and clients may call it the ACLM plate or the lifestyle medicine plate.

A picture of a healthy meal from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health: half the plate vegetables and fruits, a quarter whole grains, a quarter healthy protein, with healthy oils, water, and a reminder to stay active. It is a teaching tool rather than a diet, and it is the client-facing picture this archive uses.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's picture of a place setting, a plate divided into fruits, vegetables, grains and protein foods with a small circle for dairy. It was the federal icon for the Dietary Guidelines for Americans from 2011 until January 2026, when the 2025-2030 edition replaced it with a new food pyramid, and clients still bring it from school, clinics and older handouts.

A way to build a meal on a 9-inch plate: half non-starchy vegetables, a quarter protein foods, a quarter carbohydrate foods, and water or another zero-calorie drink. It is a teaching tool for people with diabetes rather than a diet with foods of its own, and the American Diabetes Association now calls it the Diabetes Plate.

An eating approach from the books of Barbara Rolls, a Penn State nutrition scientist, that steers meals toward foods with few calories for their weight, such as vegetables, fruit, broth-based soups and whole grains. It is sold and studied mainly as a way to eat less without feeling hungry, and this page also carries the wider research on energy density, labeled as research on energy density rather than on the named plan.

A weight-loss approach from Mayo Clinic that is sold in 2 forms: a book, and a paid digital program run by a company under license from Mayo Clinic. The book and the program's core plan start with a 2-week phase of 15 habits and move to a long-term phase built on a food pyramid with unlimited vegetables and fruit; the program's other meal plans and condition tracks change parts of that eating advice.

A plant-based eating pattern that adds a set daily amount of 5 kinds of food, each studied for lowering LDL cholesterol, to a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol: nuts and seeds, soy or pulse protein, foods rich in viscous fiber, plant sterols, and plant oils rich in monounsaturated fat. It was built and tested by a research group in Toronto to lower LDL cholesterol, the main blood fat linked to heart disease.

A way of eating built mostly on plant foods that keeps meat, poultry or fish as an occasional part of the diet rather than cutting them out. Also called semi-vegetarian, it is promoted for weight control, heart health, diabetes prevention, a longer life and a smaller environmental footprint.

A name for ways of eating built on vegetables, fruit, whole grains, beans, nuts, olive oil and fish, with less refined carbohydrate, fried food, sugary drinks and red and processed meat. It is not one defined diet, and it is promoted as a way to lower the long-lasting, low-level inflammation linked to chronic disease.

A way of eating built on vegetables, fruit, legumes, whole grains, nuts and fish, with olive oil as the main fat. It is among the most studied eating patterns in nutrition research, and it is most often recommended for heart health.

The MIND diet is an eating pattern that blends parts of the Mediterranean and DASH diets and gives particular weight to green leafy vegetables, berries, nuts, beans, whole grains, fish, poultry and olive oil. Researchers designed it to test whether the way older adults eat could slow the decline in memory and thinking that comes with age and lower the risk of Alzheimer's disease.

An eating pattern built on vegetables, fruit, whole grains and low-fat dairy foods, with less saturated fat, fewer sweets and, in its current form, a limit on sodium. It was designed and tested in the 1990s to lower blood pressure, and blood pressure is still where its evidence is strongest.