The Department of Health and Human Services’ updated nutritional guidelines, released yesterday, are a stark departure from prior food pyramids. The guidelines, spearheaded by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., are drawing eyes thanks to their emphasis on protein, specifically red meat and full-fat dairy products. But while the Trump administration says this new food pyramid will lead to a healthier American public, some medical experts are skeptical.
‘Untethered from scientific research’
The government’s new recommendations reverse the old advice, and the “now-inverted food pyramid prominently features a steak, an entire chicken, and whole milk up top, relegating carbs to the bottom point — minor real estate compared to the portion they occupied before,” said Mother Jones. But these recommendations are “untethered from scientific research” and “seem more aligned with a burgeoning source of dietary advice: hypermasculine influencers.”
The new pyramid was prepared with nutritionists who have “food industry ties,” said Axios, creating a potential conflict of interest. The push for a diet heavy on red meat also comes at a time of “soaring prices for beef and other foods and may be impractical for Americans on tight budgets.”
Even so, a “lot of the advice in the pyramid is sound,” said Slate. But most doctors are “very disappointed” that the new model features “red meat and saturated fat sources at the very top, as if that’s something to prioritize,” said Christopher Gardner, a nutrition expert at Stanford University, to NPR. It goes “against decades and decades of evidence and research.”
‘Eating real food’
Despite the clear skepticism from some health experts, others say the new recommendations could help Americans be healthier. The “overall focus on eating real food is great,” since the “majority of our diets come from ultraprocessed foods that are linked to an array of chronic diseases,” said Lindsey Smith Taillie, a nutrition epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, to PBS NewsHour. So the advice to eat whole foods could be “enormously helpful, both for policymakers and for your everyday consumer.”
Children could benefit from the change. The focus on real foods could have “profound effects, because the majority of school lunches are coming from ready-to-eat, ready-to-heat and highly processed sources,” Taillie said to PBS. And guidelines for added sugar restrictions are also “much more strict than previous recommendations.” | 
