The bottom layer was literally called the "Bread, Cereal, Rice, & Pasta Group" and featured a picture of a bowl of processed breakfast cereal, among other things.
The top layer was "Fats, Oils, & Sweets" and had some white and yellow spots.
Maybe it wasn't supposed to be justifying that, but as an infographic that's what it was suggesting.
Telling people they should be having a lot of cereal and showing them a bowl of cereal (along with saltine crackers) is going to lead them to believe that's healthy. Especially in the 90's when "cereal" for almost everyone meant highly processed breakfast cereals with a lot of added sugars, and there was little awareness with how much sugar was being added to everything.
Telling people to eat a lot of whole grains is entirely different from telling people to eat a lot of, quote: "bread, cereal, rice and pasta."
The top layer was "Fats, Oils, & Sweets" and had some white and yellow spots.
Maybe it wasn't supposed to be justifying that, but as an infographic that's what it was suggesting.