The new food pyramid is lying to you
Are you tired of being misled by the latest dietary guidelines?
If you've read the new federal dietary guidelines, you might have felt confused or even misled. While the US Health Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., touted them as a significant reset of federal nutrition policy, the truth is more nuanced. The guidelines don't offer any groundbreaking insights into nutrition science, and most Americans can safely ignore them. But for those who are curious, they provide a fascinating glimpse into the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement's push to reshape American food culture.
The guidelines are a mix of sound advice and controversial recommendations. While some of their guidance aligns with the expert consensus that has long formed the foundation of US dietary guidelines, others contradict it. For instance, the guidelines make a show of dispensing with expertise and making provocative, ill-supported recommendations in the language of science.
Here's a breakdown of the key takeaways and the controversy surrounding the new guidelines:
Key Takeaways:
- The Trump administration's new dietary guidelines align with nutrition science consensus in some ways but contradict it in others.
- The guidelines' most dramatic change is an aggressive shift toward centering meat and dairy consumption, which puts the recommendations at odds with the scientific expert panel that made recommendations for this iteration of the guidelines.
- The new upside-down food pyramid is confusing and is hard to read even on its own terms — it should perhaps be read more as an aesthetic symbol than a serious policy instrument.
- While the guidelines do shape many government food programs (including school meals), the practical impact of the new guidelines will likely be limited — most Americans don’t tend to follow government nutrition guidance.
Controversy & Comment Hooks:
- The guidelines' emphasis on eating meat, dairy, and eggs, and the exclusion of plant-based proteins like beans, lentils, and nuts, represents an explicit rejection of the recommendations of the scientific panel that advises the dietary guidelines. This has sparked debate among nutrition experts.
- The guidelines' characterization of vegetarian and vegan diets as potentially harmful due to nutrient shortfalls is controversial and has been criticized by some for being alarmist.
- The guidelines' contradictory advice, such as limiting saturated fat but allowing red meat and full-fat dairy, invites misinterpretation and has been criticized for being confusing and inconsistent.
What the Guidelines Say — and Don’t — About Meat, Dairy, and Plant-Based Proteins:
At the core of the new guidelines is a paradox. While they don’t change the recommended limit on saturated fat intake, they emphasize eating meat, dairy, and eggs, which contradicts the expert consensus. The guidelines also call for higher overall protein consumption, which could be interpreted as an invitation to pile on more meat and dairy.
Meanwhile, the guidelines' characterization of vegetarian and vegan diets can only be described as hostile and stigmatizing, enumerating an inflated list of potential nutrient shortfalls, some of which are not well-supported. This isn’t to say that there aren’t nutrients that need special attention in plant-based diets — there absolutely are — but they can be met fairly straightforwardly, and all dietary patterns come with nutritional trade-offs.
Vibes, Hold the Science:
The new guidelines are littered with confusingly contradictory advice. While they recommend limiting saturated fat, they also allow red meat and full-fat dairy and cooking with butter and beef tallow. They focus on whole grains but also include "true sourdough" as a preferred grain. There are also what appear to be outright errors, such as olive oil being mentioned as a meaningful source of essential fatty acids, when it's actually very low in them.
Overall, the new guidelines feel more like a culture-war emblem than a careful public health policy instrument. While they don’t go full-bore on the concept of "ultra-processed foods," they still implement a version of this thinking through their framework of "highly processed foods."
In the end, all this might just be so much sound and fury — most Americans, after all, don’t follow the government’s food rules anyway.
