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RFK Flips The Food Pyramid And Announces Massive Changes To Dietary Guidelines
Keeping in line with the Make America Healthy Again agenda, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced major changes to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) on Wednesday.
The new guidance flips the food pyramid upside down, advising Americans to eat whole foods, prioritizing healthy fats and protein, and limiting or avoiding ultra-processed foods.
Kennedy and Rollins say the war on “healthy fats” is over. Americans should prioritize high-quality, nutrient-dense protein foods in every meal, including a variety of animal sources, such as eggs, poultry, seafood, and red meat. Plant-sourced protein, such as beans, peas, lentils, legumes, nuts, seeds, and soy, is also recommended.
The DGA also unsurprisingly advises against the consumption of ultra-processed foods. The guidance calls to “avoid highly processed, packaged, prepared, ready-to-eat, or other foods that are salty or sweet” and “avoid sugar-sweetened beverages, such as soda, fruit drinks, and energy drinks.”
And while fiber-rich whole grains are recommended as part of a healthy diet, the DGA emphasizes that refined carbohydrates should be avoided.
Credit: HHS
Though the guidance is updated every five years by HHS and the USDA, there have been no major changes made to the DGA since its creation in 1980, making Kennedy and Rollins’ announcement particularly noteworthy.
DGA guidance is extremely impactful and doesn’t just shape national messaging. It also heavily influences daycare and school lunch programs, military and hospital food, and even federal food assistance programs, like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
The DGA has been scrutinized for years, with critics arguing that it doesn’t reflect real science and has, instead, been heavily influenced by major companies and financial interests. For example, some scientists who serve on the DGA committee have received funding from food, beverage, or agricultural companies or even conduct research sponsored by industry groups. The conflicts are disclosed, but still raise red flags for Americans.
Some of the most frequent criticisms of the DGA concern how ultra-processed foods were deemed acceptable and how low-fat diets, which often contain ultra-processed foods, are effectively promoted. Kennedy has outright called ultra-processed foods and additives “poison” and pinpointed them as a major culprit in the childhood obesity epidemic.
Though the public health space has been routinely critical and even adversarial toward Kennedy and his agenda, most health professionals recognize that limiting ultra-processed foods and prioritizing whole foods is beneficial to health.
The American Medical Association (AMA), for example, said in a statement that it “applauds the Administration’s new Dietary Guidelines for spotlighting the highly processed foods, sugar-sweetened beverages, and excess sodium that fuel heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and other chronic illnesses.”
“The Guidelines affirm that food is medicine and offer clear direction patients and physicians can use to improve health,” the AMA added.
Where the disconnect still rears its head usually centers around the consumption of red meat. For example, The New York Times highlighted that some experts claim too much red meat can cause serious health problems, and such meat should be generally substituted with more plant-based sources of protein like beans, peas, and lentils.
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