Lobbying groups, putting out press releases, claiming victory...
Here's some things you won't find in any of the documents, including the PDFs at the bottom: community gardens, local food, farmers markets, grass fed, free range... Because agribusiness doesn't make money with those.
Just because you might like the results doesn't mean they aren't corrupt as hell
> grass fed, free range... Because agribusiness doesn't make money with those.
Agribusiness absolutely makes money off of those. In fact they had a hilariously easy time adapting to the consumer trend because all they had to do to label a cow “free range” or “grass fed” was change the finishing stage to a lower density configuration instead of those abominable feed lots you see along highways. The first two stages, rearing and pasturing, didn’t change because they were already “free range” and “grass fed”. Half of the farmland in the US is pastureland and leaving animals in the field to eat grass was always the cheapest way to rear and grow them. They only really get fed corn and other food at the end to fatten them up for human consumption.
The dirty not-so-secret is that free range/grass fed cows eat almost the exact same diet as regular cows, they just eat a little more grass because they’re in the field more during finishing. They’re still walking up to troughs of feed, because otherwise the beef would be unpalatable and grow quite slower.
True grass fed beef is generally called “grass finished” beef and it’s unregulated so you won’t find it at a supermarket. They taste gamier and usually have a metallic tang that I quite honestly doubt would ever be very popular. The marbling is also noticeably different and less consistent. Grain finished beef became popular in the 1800s and consumers in the West have strongly preferred it since.
I’m not sure you can even find a cow in the entire world that isn’t “grass fed”. Calves need the grass for their gut microbiomes to develop properly.
> all they had to do to label a cow “free range” or “grass fed” was change the finishing stage to a lower density configuration instead of those abominable feed lots you see along highways.
And this is exactly what people have wanted, and are willing to pay a premium for.
I appreciate the depth of your responses in this thread. I feel frustrated to see so many nitpicky comments on your responses, but I appreciate that you address them anyway.
One non-nitpicky critique of the parent you replied to: under USDA labeling rules, a product may only be labeled “grass-fed” if the producer can substantiate that cattle were fed a 100% forage diet after weaning. Feeding grain, including corn during finishing, disqualifies the claim. While there is no standalone statute banning grain feeding, labeling grain-fed beef as “grass-fed” would be considered false or misleading and is not permitted by USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service.
In New Zealand dairy herds are routinely fed all sorts of supplemental feed (palm kernel leftover from pressing palm oil, imported from Indonesia is particularly popular, with cows as well as farmers I guess) yet the products are labeled "grass fed" because the cows are kept in bare paddocks with grass underfoot.
The cows have no shade nor shelter from storms and would be much better off in herd homes, but cheapness and very little care for animal welfare
I only vaguely said “the West” because I didn’t want to get into the complexities of subsistence farming, regional quirks, and pedantics like “soybeans hulls are often considered roughage”.
About a third of beef in the world is truly grass finished and two thirds of that is subsistence farmers who can’t afford the grain. Most of the rest comes from Australia, Brazil, and New Zealand because it’s more competitive to leave them in pasture than import the grain.
As much as you may want to hold your nose up at the US, the (vast) majority of beef sold in the world is grain finished and has been for a long time. It’s just more economically competitive and people strongly prefer the taste and texture.
If you want solid evidence you can read a book on the history of animal husbandry. Roman sources include Cato the Elder, Columella, and Varro describe how they used supplemental grains to get cows through the winter and provide oxen enough energy to work (and to feed cavalry which would have been completely impossible without them). Humanity has been feeding grains to cattle for thousands of years, likely prehistorically.
Then in the first half of 1800s a bunch of American farmers with an abundance of corn independently discovered that they could grow bigger cows for slaughter in half the time if they fed them grains instead of roughage like hay or grass. That idea quickly spread to Europe and by the time the green revolution and globalization rolled around in the second half of the 20th century, almost every body started doing it.
This isn’t some new phenomenon. It predates the globalization of agriculture and if you were to ask a random farmer around the world whether they feed their cows a ton of grain they’d look at you like you were asking a very stupid question.
It’d be like asking “do plants need fertilizer?” Yes. If you want to feed the world, yes they do.
You've argued that grain is fed to cattle; which was not in question.
The parent questioned whether the use of grain for finishing was down to a demand based on consumer taste preference.
You've done nothing that would move them from their position of questioning the evidence here.
The detail you do provide shows grain feeding increases yield for farmers, which would be an indicator that it is financial benefit to herd owners that drives the use of grain; potentially moving away from your assertion.
Angus beef is very popular in UK, I'm relatively sure it's grass fed?
That is not at all what the GP was asking because this:
> ...and _people in the USA_ strongly prefer...
Although, I don't know how solid the evidence for even that statement is.
Is completely incoherent in the context of the thread and I just did my best to answer the two words “solid evidence.”
However you make a good point. There is a chicken and egg problem here between consumer taste and farmers optimizing their yield. I don’t have an answer, but I invite you to compare them yourself, if you ever get the chance to eat grass finished beef versus a high end ribeye. Or something like wagyu/kobe where they’re fed almost exclusively rice mash or grains.
As for “angus beef” no that doesn’t mean anything. The US/UK/EU don’t have any meaningful regulations about those marketing terms.
>Is completely incoherent in the context of the thread
Ah, well it seemed cogent and straightforward to me: the OP suggested that your indication that grain feeding was driven by consumer taste preference seemed to lack evidence.
It seems like something that will have been tested (certainly for low-n values), it also seems likely to vary by culture/region substantially.
One of my "if I were in charge" ideas is for origin marks that provide all information about inputs into any product made available for sale. Under sight a system one could look up whether the farmer bought grain feed.
I live in Australia and about half our beef production is apparently grass-finished. I believe what we get in the supermarket is more likely to be grain-finished, but I've definitely bought steaks with the telltale grass-finished yellow fat from Woolworths before. My understanding is that it's more about rainfall and seasonal feed than the particular flavour of one or the other.
For the record, I also think calling grass-fed beef gamey, metallic, and saying it's unlikely to be popular (like the top-level reply did) is an overstatement. The most prominent thing is the different coloured fat. The taste isn't hugely different, probably because our grass-finished beef still gets enough feed.
Cows and sheep in the UK (and I guess much of Europe) wander round outside all year round and I guess are eating almost entirely grass. You can't go for a walk in the countryside without coming across them constantly. Most of the beef you buy in the shops (not talking about processed foods) is produced in the UK.
> Cows and sheep in the UK (and I guess much of Europe) wander round outside all year round
Probably most of them, but definitely not all of them. https://nltimes.nl/2025/08/18/dairy-cows-netherlands-never-g...: “The total number of dairy cows in the country reached 1.5 million last year. Of these, over 460,000 cows—roughly 31 percent of the national herd—did not spend any time outside“
A factor with cows kept for milking is that you want them to be able to walk to the milking robot at all times, and moving food to where the robot and the cows are can be easier than moving the robot to where the food and the cows are.
Detail in there: during winter, UK livestock are sometimes fed silage, which is grass that has been harvested during the summer and partially fermented. UK is majority local production, but there's significant imports from Ireland.
People talk a lot about water and land use, but if you have the conditions of land that is (a) naturally watered and (b) not flat enough for arable farming, using it for livestock is much more environmentally friendly than, say, feeding them imported soy - leaving only the methane problem.
Dairy in the UK also tastes far better than in the US. British people often comment how hard it is to deal with the dairy in the US which tastes like water in comparison.
What he's saying is that the grandparent (top-rated as of this writing) comment claiming that agribusinesses are hiding the benefits of "community gardens, local food, farmers markets, grass fed, free range..." because they don't make money off of them is unfounded.
I personally don't have any insight into the situation and I definitely don't want to defend big businesses, I'm just explaining what you're replying to.
> all they had to do to label a cow “free range” or “grass fed” was change the finishing stage to a lower density configuration instead of those abominable feed lots you see along highways.
This is a material win for humane treatment of animals as well as the health of the consumers who aren't eating the stress hormones of a tortured large mammal. The price difference isn't even that big. Of all the things to complain about in the meat industry, this is not top of mind in my opinion.
>Agribusiness absolutely makes money off of those.
I took the heart of their point to be about local food infrastructure and co-ops and farmers markets, and the grass fed bring cited insofar as it was complementary to those.
You rightly note that "grass fed" beef is effectively the same as "made with* real cheese", technically true even if it's in the parts per millions, and not at all a signal of authenticity it might seem to be at first glance. But I feel like this is all a detour from their point about local food infrastructure.
Like I said in a reply to the sibling comment, that’s a regional quirk (taste). Most of the beef exported from NZ to the US goes to meat products like burgers.
Australia is more interesting because it’s 50% grass finished but I could never find a source on how much of that was exported to SEA or US and what products it went to.
Another country that predominantly grass finishes is Brazil but they export mostly to China. Again I couldn’t find a source on how much of exports to the US go to meat products (we source a lot of our hamburger meat and pet food from random countries). I remember in all three cases very little is exported to the EU.
> Like I said in a reply to the sibling comment, that’s a regional quirk (taste
It's a "regional quirk" that applies to far more of the world than US tastes, by my reckoning. Even within the US you'll find plenty of people who don't prefer bland beef, and outside it's just... some parts of Western Europe that share the bland obsession?
> Here's some things you won't find in any of the documents, including the PDFs at the bottom: community gardens, local food, farmers markets, grass fed, free range... Because agribusiness doesn't make money with those.
Are those relevant to addressing America's national diet deficiencies? None of them are currently anywhere big enough to make a practical difference to most people.
Also most of the health problems with what people eat are from what foods they eat and how much they eat rather than from not choosing the highest quality of those particular foods. E.g., someone might snack often on candy. If they can be convinced to switch to snacking on fruit it doesn't really matter much if they get that fruit from Safeway or a farmer's market. Maybe the farmer's market fruit is healthier for them than the Safeway fruit but the difference will be tiny compared to the gains from switching from candy to fruit.
The point is with many hundreds of pages maybe there could have been something like
"local farmers markets have shown to address concerns about food deserts especially in lower income communities" or some obvious non-controversial observation. Maybe "community gardens have been demonstrated to increase lifespan in multiple studies"
The point is these things are decided on by a committee. To find out where their priorities are one of the bigger tells is when you find really obvious things that are not there.
If this was a sincere effort, where is all the obvious stuff?
I think it's less about that farmer's market produce being healthier, and more about it being tastier. I've encountered plenty of people saying things like "I don't like tomatoes" when it turns out all they've eaten are pale, out-of-season tomatoes from the supermarket.
A big part of getting people to eat better is educating them about seasonality and what good produce should taste like, so that they end up actually liking it.
A farm by our cottage had a sign out last year, selling vegetables. We bought some cauliflower and had it for dinner. It was supposed to be a side dish but it was so darn good I don't even remember the main dish.
Later I got some vegetables from a friend who had grown them at a local allotment garden. Made some vegetable soup with them and I swear it's one of the best meals I've had, and I've had some real nice meals.
Flavor in each case was so far beyond what I can get in the grocery stores here it's hardly comparable.
A lot of it comes down to what the person you're responding to said, seasonality. I grew up in a very rural farming area and now live in a very large city. While the produce at the grocery store is generally inferior to that of being near a farm, when things are in season, it is at least comparable. That apple you buy in July is never going to be as good as one bought in the fall, it doesn't matter where you buy it from.
No reason to believe their numbers either given the shenanigans they have engaged in.
We need to be smart and not knee jerk into feel good memes though. Local gardens and community gardens have higher resource use per acre than large farm ops. Commercial farm infrastructure is far more resilient and lasts longer while consumer gardening gear is cheap and disposable. Consumer gardening gear manufacturers factories burn tons of resources to crank out tons of low quality kit, consumers burn through piles of it. That's not sustainable either.
Plus you really want the average American dumping chemicals in community ground water to grow the biggest pumpkin in the zip code?
Americans need to find common ground on the path forward not fragment into tens of millions of little resource intensive potato farmers
> Plus you really want the average American dumping chemicals in community ground water to grow the biggest pumpkin in the zip code?
Just because it’s out of sight doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Industrial farming and specially animal farming is one of the most polluting industries, subsidized to produce environmental damage, population diseases and animal abuse.
The value of smaller gardens are not measured in the produce harvested but the knowledge sowed. Many are federally funded at schools, community centers, or local libraries to serve as outdoor classrooms.
> The value of smaller gardens are not measured in the produce harvested but the knowledge sowed
No, it should be measured in terms of amount of input relative to the amount of output. It’s almost never the case that small farms is going to be more efficient—not only cost wise, but for the environment—than large scale farming.
They can help educate a nation on which are the healthiest foods to eat, how to prepare them, what they taste like, etc. That may allow us to more healthily feed a nation 100%, while also using fewer resources.
Been doing it the same way for centuries so, care to elaborate on what's wrong with how they farm?
Also, just because their setup isn't optimal, doesn't mean it's the cause for some ecological crisis like you seem to be implying. I live in Japan, I watch people farm every year, there is very little going on that makes me suspect there is some wide-spread ecological damage being done by people who want to grow massive pumpkins, even though, people do grow massive pumpkins.
You telling everyone that gardening is bad for the environment is interesting because I absolutely cannot imagine what is worse for the environment than the industrial scale monocrop style farming that goes on most developed countries. Like, holy shit...
People need to eat and industrial scale farming is what enables us to make enough, affordable food.
It has plenty downsides. But it’s a brilliant and truly efficient system that is being perfected by thousands of scientists and it has prevented hunger and chaos for decades now.
If you want to see real change, people would need to have way more time, be less lazy, have more money and be less demanding when it comes to variety and availability.
In other words, it’s easier to keep perfecting the system we have because it’s easier to change procedures than it is to change people.
If you think I'm a Democrat or part of any party, you don't know me.
I'm virulently anti-tribalistic and it's hurt me professionally, socially and romantically my whole life. Trust me, I've got nobody. It's a big problem.
So yeah, the tribal claim, that's just you. You're just talking about yourself
I'm thousands of miles outside the US sitting firmly in the center watching left and right be at each other's throats over absolutely everything so maybe we're kind of alike.
> “Goshdangit why did arbiter of change get lobbied by [tangential cartel]?”
I don’t think it’s a good take, although I won’t go so far as to accuse you of political bias. It’s not like the guidelines say to eat Tyson-branded chicken; Let’s not complain about positive progress.
You know what got the flawed food pyramid created? Lobbying by Seventh Day Adventists. That did not get enough outrage as it hurt countless people in ways that are difficult to quantify. They made fat and meat the enemy across the country because of their religious beliefs. They paid off researchers and even had one claim that Coca Cola was healthier than steak.
Let’s focus on forward progress and not how we got there.
This could certainly be fantastic, and very good advice. Or it could be a lot of bunk, I don't know. Given the source (i.e., RFK), I refuse to trust it.
The point of guidance like this is to be trustworthy and authoritative. If I have the ability to independently evaluate it myself, then I didn't really need it in the first place.
Of course, I might be mistaken to have ever trusted the government's nutrition guidance. It's not like undue influence from industry lobbying is unique to this administration.
>> If I have the ability to independently evaluate it myself, then I didn't really need it in the first place.
At what point in time was the government's guidance ever to be accepted on blind faith without critical evaluation? Take this input, compare with data on the same topic from other positions that are far from the source and make up your own mind.
If the government's guidance isn't to be at least mostly trusted, then I'm not sure the government should be offering guidance at all. (Which is perhaps a sensible position in itself.)
In other words, if I learn enough about nutrition to be able to critically evaluate the government's guidance, then is that guidance adding any additional signal? At that point, I should just rely on my sources about nutrition.
I've never been one to rely on official guidance blindly. For example I don't show up to the airport two hours early, and cheerfully laugh at advice that I should. But I'd like to believe that this guidance is better than total nonsense.
This is really just bothsidesism. In reality there are fundamental differences between groups in the way that people evaluate events, evidence, even their own party's questionable actions. Papering it over with by claiming criticism is all just mindless tribalism just serves to excuse those with the worst behavior. In this specific case, government food policy has been drastically changed to suit the peculiar ideology of one man, with no public hearings, no debate, and no scientific consensus. Is it not appropriate to be skeptical, regardless of one's "tribe"??
Bingo. It’s pretty annoying. My tribe can do no wrong (in fact my tribe will freely point out its faults because again, it can do no wrong). Anything from the other tribe isn’t just wrong, it’s evil and all that is wrong with everything. Those guys are Neanderthals, not even worthy of telling the time to. My tribe is incredibly smart and gifted. We can do no wrong!
Unfortunately the only way to opt out is to basically stop participating at all. No more consumption of tribal news media and since most news media is incredibly tribal (even saying it’s not tribal is in fact tribal)… it basically means no more news media consumption. Which makes you uninformed instead of merely misinformed.
I dunno the solution to this. It’s a complex web of everybody playing to their incentives including the algorithms that aggregate things for consumption.
Again though, I’ll firmly emphasize that it is the other tribe that is wrong. My tribe isn’t biased or hateful or outrage driven. We say we aren’t so clearly it’s not possible.
If the actions and beliefs of a group are fundamentally morally repugnant to me, I think that it is reasonable to not expect me to be able to find "something positive" in it. We are not amoral automata with grocery-list style utility functions.
I have people in my personal sphere that make this sort of argument and it honestly feels like gaslighting. The undercurrent is: "Look, you don't like this guy, I get it. But if you can't see that he does some good, then you are the one who is irrational and not really in a sound state of mind." Meanwhile completely preventable, life-threatening, life-destroying diseases such as measles are back because of the obscurantist beliefs that come with this "new refreshing outlook". This is a bit like saying: "look, you can say what you want about the Spanish inquisition but they kept rates of extra-marital affairs down."
Corporations love this sort of feel-good campaign (the same way they love performative LGBTQ / feminism / diversity when the culture wars swing the other way) for two main reasons: (1) they distract from fundamental issues that threaten their real interests; (2) they shift the blame on big societal issues completely to the public. They do this with climate change, they do it with increase of wealth inequality and they most certainly do it with public health.
All developed nations have a problem with processed food. Granted, it is particularly severe in the USA, but the ONE THING that separates the USA from almost every other developed nation in our planet is the absence of socialized healthcare. This is the obvious salient thing to look at before all others, so also obviously, a lot of money will be spent to misdirect and distract from this very topic.
>If the actions and beliefs of a group are fundamentally morally repugnant to me,
sure, although if tribal differences are always experienced as fundamentally morally repugnant one might think the moral calibration is screwed a bit too tight.
>I think that it is reasonable to not expect me to be able to find "something positive" in it.
Sure, I do think it is possible that some groups are so morally repugnant that they have absolutely nothing to offer whatsoever. For example that tribe of cave dwelling cannibals in the film The 13th Warrior, man those guys sucked! But the comment seemed more to be about how it is weird that when you find some group does some things that you find morally repugnant then they have nothing they do that can ever be good.
I have lived in places in which I find much of the surrounding culture to have behaviors that I found morally repugnant, or intellectually repugnant for that matter, but even at my most contemptuous of a culture and a people I will at times be forced to admit, honestly, that they have behaviors that can also be considered admirable (in many cultures the repugnant bits are so tightly bound to the admirable bits though I can see how it is difficult not to condemn everything)
> sure, although if tribal differences are always experienced as fundamentally morally repugnant one might think the moral calibration is screwed a bit too tight.
They're not always experienced this way. But that's the trend in America.
> but even at my most contemptuous of a culture and a people I will at times be forced to admit, honestly, that they have behaviors that can also be considered admirable
Ya, I think it's something along the lines of "even a broken clock is right twice a day".
Do I need to give out a cookie when the clock tells me the correct time if it's fucking me on the time the rest of the day?
Even a developmentally disabled human tends to be significantly more complex than a stopped clock so the analogy doesn't work well.
if anything it is more than a computer with a lousy video and sound card, you don't use it for games or streaming movies or most things, but due to some other things (which I am not going to take the time to create a plausible scenario why this should be) the computer is actually really superior as a server, so you have set it up for that. Do you give out a cookie for the computer that works really well at serving content over port 80 despite it sucks for anything you enjoy?
> Even a developmentally disabled human tends to be significantly more complex than a stopped clock so the analogy doesn't work well.
I think it works perfectly, honestly. Maybe moreso after the above statement.
> Do you give out a cookie for the computer that works really well at serving content over port 80 despite it sucks for anything you enjoy?
No, I do not. Nor does the server ask for a cookie. It just does its job consistently without making a fuss. If governments could do that bare minimum thing, the world would be a better place.
> If the actions and beliefs of a group are fundamentally morally repugnant to me, I think that it is reasonable to not expect me to be able to find "something positive" in it.
No it isn't reasonable. In fact it is one of the stupidest things you can do. If you read any history, you will see that failures in military, politics, science etc. (really pick anything) are often due to key people simply refusing to learn from their opponents and/or refusing to adjust to the new reality. Often this is done because they find their opponents morally repugnant, or lacking in some virtue they happen to hold as important.
It is fine if you don't like the current US Administration. However if they do something that happens to be good, it is fine to acknowledge it as such, while still pointing out what else they are doing wrong. Otherwise you just come off as a sore loser and people will stop taking any notice of you.
I think this is true, and the broad sense of that website is an improvement on what went before, so we should acknowledge that. But it's also right that people point out the moralising tone and connect other administration actions and policies with an assessment of whether these principles will be backed by policies that actually make any difference in real life. My suspicion is that this will be part of an effort to further stigmatise people damaged by the industrial food industry without doing anything to make healthy food cheaper or more accessible, but I'd love to be wrong!
> If the actions and beliefs of a group are fundamentally morally repugnant to me, I think that it is reasonable to not expect me to be able to find "something positive" in it.
I'm not sure you appreciate how symmetrical this statement is. You are on Team A, saying it about Team B, but nothing in the statement actually depends on that permutation of teams -- it could be equally compellingly said by a Team B member about Team A.
That is misinformation. Very few developed nations have socialized healthcare. Many of them do better in terms of universal coverage and cost control but they don't have a single-payer system or force healthcare providers to be government employees. For examples see Germany, Switzerland, Japan, Australia, Israel, etc.
Those diseases are back because of rampant immigration. People from other countries bring them here. It has nothing to do with "obscurantist beliefs", whatever those might be.
this is clearly a net loss for public health in general, politics aside. Having alcohol in dietary guidelines (without even stating a drink limit) is positively idiotic.
Trite, yes, but personally I'd argue that accusing people of intellectual dishonesty (i.e. bad faith) is by definition unfalsifiable and therefore unproductive. Always.
Arguing with someone who is intellectually dishonest is also usually unproductive (unless you know what you're doing and want to convince bystanders). So it's more of a tie.
There are a number of lies and omissions here, as there have been from just about every administration due to agribusiness lobbying.
You're playing the tribalism game by setting up this strawman, you too are being played.
I'd personally be just as critical towards anyone who claimed they were fighting a "war on protein" that plainly doesn't exist. Americans consume more meat per capita than nearly any other country.
meat != protein, that's just where we've historically gotten most of it. Even meat != meat; it's totally acceptable to read & accept "eat more protein" and then figure out how you're going to get it within your tolerances for fat, sugar, environmental impact, economics, etc.
I was surprised how impressed I was by the website. The layout, design, focus on simple foods.
I think the person above may just feel skeptical of the scientific and medical opinion of most of the people running the US government. I know I do. When I read "gold-standard science and common sense," I rolled my eyes. Because the previous news cycle said they don't think meningitis vaccines are important for kids, yet say they follow gold-standard science. It's hard for me to reconcile the two.
EDIT: "rooted in...personal responsibility."
"America is sick.
The data is clear.
50% of Americans have prediabetes or diabetes
75% of adults report having at least one chronic condition
90% of U.S. healthcare spending goes to treating chronic disease—much of which is linked to diet and lifestyle."
It also has this moralizing tone, and seems to make some pretty bold claims about why Americans have prediabetes or diabetes. For example, with the introduction of GLP-1 drugs, like Ozempic, people (including some I know well) have significantly reduced their diabetic risk. And they're still eating the same processed foods.
Also, "linked to diet and lifestyle" is a pretty broad claim. Maybe the undersleeping and overcaffeinating actually matters more for increased appetite and desire to eat less healthy foods.
In short, I just don't trust many people when they say health is so inextricably and exclusively tied to food source, especially when they tend to think most vaccines are net negatives for individuals and society.
The website is good information, and if it came from a NPO is would be great... But the US government has so much power (and responsibility) to protect the US consumers from the food industry.
- Ban some of the ingredients like they did for trans fat
- Force better labeling, like the Nutri-Score in France and EU
- Tax the more unhealthy choices so they don't become the cheapest solution - and maybe use that tax money to subsidize healthier alternatives
This site looks like they're just shaming the consumers for falling for the tricks the government allows the food industry to pull off.
I remember a European MEP who was fighting the food industry to impose Nutri-Score saying on TV that no constituent comes to them saying "help me, I'm too fat". However many expect politicians to boost the job market. The food industry knows that, so each time you try to impose some regulation they'll say "if you do that, we're be forced to do so many layoffs!"
> - Force better labeling, like the Nutri-Score in France and EU
NutriScore is mostly useless, to the point of being misleading. The system was cooked up by the industry, which explains a lot.
It is a label that tells you how nutritious a given product is "compared to products in the same category". So you could have, say, candy or frozen pizza with a NutriScore A and that would be just fine according to this system because it happens to be more nutritious than other candy/pizza. In other words, a product having a NutriScore of A doesn't mean the product is actually healthy or good for you.
I’m in Colombia right now and they actually have a great food labeling system. It just warns you if a product contains too much sugar, salt, additives etc, without trying to score. Whereas the European labels give you a false sense that everything is nutritious.
Who or what defines what is "too much" of any ingredient? Isn't that a scoring system too?
European NutriScore "assigns products a rating letter from A (best) to E (worst), with associated colors from green to red. High content of fruits and vegetables, fibers, protein and healthy oils (rapeseed, walnut and olive oils) per 100 g of food product promote a preferable score, while high content of energy, sugar, saturated fatty acids, and sodium per 100 g promote a detrimental score." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutri-Score
That sounds useful. Consumers most likely choose the food they want to eat by type, being able to spot the healthier options within a category sounds like it would help me in the supermarket.
We have a traffic light system, pretty useful. But when all items in a category are bad for you, and you know it, them all having red lights doesn't help much.
I'd certainly try alternatives that are marginally healthier, if that's true generally then it puts some pressure on food industry to move to healthier choices.
Personally I don't care either way about RFK Jr's new food pyramid.
I think the bigger danger of giving this credit is lending any legitimacy to RFK Jr who is actively undermining actual medical advice and wrecking havoc on our childhood vaccine programs.
Just because a broken clock is right twice a day, doesn't mean you need to give the broken clock credit for being right.
By doing this "oh it's just tribalism" lends legitimacy to RFK Jr and furthers his ability to kill kids with preventable disease and further damage the credibility of modern medical science.
"Oh he has some good ideas" Yeah? Which ones? Does the average american have the time/curiosity/capability to sort through which of his ideas are good and which ones will kill their kids?
Tell me, which of the following books should I read? Should I start on the silly anthony fauci attack book? or the book on vaccines by the man who isn't a doctor?
The Riverkeepers: Two Activists Fight to Reclaim Our Environment as a Basic Human Right
Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy
Saint Francis of Assisi: A Life of Joy
American Heroes: Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and the
American Civil War
Robert Smalls: American Hero
Framed: Why Michael Skakel Spent Over a Decade in Prison for a Murder He Didn’t Commit
American Values: Lessons I Learned from My Family
The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health
A Letter to Liberals: Censorship and COVID: An Attack on Science and American Ideals
Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak
The Wuhan Cover-Up: And the Terrifying Bioweapons Arms Race
It would be pretty weird if they were so broken they were incapable of saying anything right, even at times when they were trying to be ingratiating. You'd have to be astonishingly insane, more even than these people are, to be totally unable to identify something that would be good press.
I'm not saying they can't reach that point, but this ain't it. They are just getting details wildly wrong and being generally obtuse, but this is an attempt at not seeming completely insane and should be graded on that curve. You can't expect every little detail to be insane, that's asking a lot.
Or the current man in control of Health and Human Services is at best saying nothing of value. (At worst, he's sidelining vaccines for multiple infectious diseases, but that's off topic)
because they're a source of local, sustainable, seasonal, and healthy food that isn't peddled by agribusiness lobbies — grassfed beef specifically is leaner, lower in calories, and richer in beneficial nutrients
but it does matter, why not subsidize local produce instead of factory-farmed meat? if we just wave away "it's too expensive" as some natural state (which it's not, it's shaped by the government) then nothing ever improves
we need to ask why people can't afford what's arguably better for the environment and the workers producing it
So the animal rights and environmental groups are upset that health targets are prioritizing health over mudding the waters with these other agendas? If those are worthy goals on their own then fine, but stop trying to suggest that we can't improve health drastically and more effectively by making simple and clear recommendations to move away form processed food.
The new guidelines prioritize meat and dairy above all else, which comes with well known health issues, especially at the rate Americans consume them.
There's already plenty of evidence (victory lap press releases from the respective industries) that indicate that this was accomplished due to lobbying... so we haven't moved at all: the old recommendations were imperfect and fueled by specific industry preference, and the new ones do the same.
> we can't improve health drastically and more effectively by making simple and clear recommendations to move away form processed food.
pretty much every nutritionist has been urging a reduction in processed foods for years now, the solution isn't to replace processed foods with meat and dairy... that's just a different problem
What are the "well known health issues"? I have seen some low-quality observational studies (junk science) which show some weak correlation between consumption of animal products and negative health outcomes but so far nothing conclusive one way or the other.
you've got to find better sources than a health coach selling a subscription program that benefits from this take, that post is indistinguishable from spam
> Unprocessed and processed red meat consumption are both associated with higher risk of CVD, CVD subtypes, and diabetes, with a stronger association in western settings but no sex difference.
When I saw that protein target, I knew there must be shenanigans… 0.5-0.7g per pound is within the range that BODY BUILDERS target for maximum hypertrophy (1g/lb is a myth that wastes peoples money). Eating 4-5 chicken breasts per day is ridiculous for a normal person.
I am not sure if you're disagreeing with the original poster here but you're both saying the same thing in different units. 1g/kg != 1g/lb which is A LOT more protein and a complete waste of time. As a mostly vegetarian who lifts regularly, I am targeting a bit more than 1g/kg but being from the US it is a lot less than 1g/lb. :p
Wait, what? I lift weights and chicken breast is a fundamental part of my diet but I'm eating 1/3 to 1/2 a single chicken breast a day, and an egg for breakfast. That CAN'T be right.
I get that I include some rice, peanuts etc. in there, but even if I quit EVERYTHING else there's no way 4 to 5 chicken breasts a day is accurate.
>Eating real food means choosing foods that are whole or minimally processed and recognizable as food. These foods are prepared with few ingredients and without added sugars, industrial oils, artificial flavors, or preservatives.
Meh, I would note that the Tyson-supported definition of "real chicken" is not one without antibiotics and growth hormones, let alone a free-range heritage breed. This would have been the standard for a "real chicken" a few human generations ago.
I was wondering why meat and veg were side by side, rather than vegetables being at the base. The new pyramid is still better than the old one, but not completely intellectually honest...
I'm not zdc1, but they may be referring to the previous advice that included more grains than fruit and veg combined. From a design perspective, it is an interesting choice to mix food groups on the same level of the pyramid.
> previous advice that included more grains than fruit and veg combined
I have not seen the pyramid with bread, cereal, rice and pasta at the base pushed for at least ~20 years. Maybe it was 25-30 years ago when I saw it pushed seriously in school and even then I did not see people taking it seriously outside of those lessons, as in people actively calling it questionable.
> A person is most likely to see a food pyramid poster in an elementary or middle school classroom, cafeteria, or hallway, where it was commonly displayed as an educational tool during the 1990s and 2000s to teach nutrition.
the first one was in 1982 or something, so you have nearly 3 whole generations who were exposed to it (X, Millennial, and Z). I really can't tell if you're actually incredulous; because all the nutrition stuff is told to schoolchildren. Adults don't use a chart, they use self-help books.
Yeah, but 2000 was 25 years ago. There's multiple generations who haven't been exposed to it, so this is not replacing the food pyramid, it's replacing what replaced the food pyramid.
only 1 generation has completely escaped the one from "25 years ago" - Alpha; and another generation is incoming; and if the new poster sticks around, a couple of generations will see the new one, too.
you're correct, my eyesight gets worse as the day goes on and i saw the second "9" as an 8. that only partially reduces the impact from my claim of X, Millennial, Zoomer; as i am gen X and i was still in "middle school" when the food pyramid came out, and my millennial sister assuredly was. the older Gen X (from the early 1970s) may or may not remember (as in an only child and childless until after the poster was no longer used) this from their younger years in classrooms.
My main point was (i think!) that really the only people seeing these posters on a regular basis are schoolchildren. I think i've seen the pyramid a dozen times in the last 20 years, on cereal boxes or websites or whatever, but if you don't recognize it, it's easily written off. Maslow also had a pyramid, etc.
I would be interested in knowing what cereal box you saw it on or where you saw it promoted seriously in the last 20 years.
In the late 90s I was in high school in a town with less that 80k people in the middle of the congenital USA and the pyramid with bread, cereal, rice and pasta at the base was not seriously pushed, or taken seriously, at school or when it came up outside of school.
The incentives are wrong. Any good policy for bad incentives is temporary and incidental
This policy selectively emphasizes the most difficult to import foods so it also plays into isolationist nativist policies.
If you think meat lobbying groups just wanted a new triangle and this isn't going to extend to water, land, energy, and environmental policies along with farm subsidies and even merger&acquisition and liability policies, sorry ...
This thing is for them, their profitability and their investors. They didn't lobby on behalf of your personal health...
Open a position on the MOO ETF. I just did. Might as well make some money from it
Sure. What about the public citizen efforts for crumple zone and seat belts in the 1960s?
Or are you saying bad incentives, good long term outcomes?
Maybe Napoleon's rework of Paris? That was done to control public dissidents but it also made it a beautiful city.
Mass timekeeping? Those were adopted for industrial labor... Seems to be quite useful
Joint stock ownership was I think invented for the slave trade but that's proven to be generally useful.
I think magnetic audio tape was made practical for a deceitful technique by the Nazis for claiming to be broadcasting live on the radio after they had fled...
In each of these instances though the thing long outlived the initial user
Is it? The change in recommendation is to have less veggies in favor of more meat. From all the recent research and meta studies I've seen it doesn't track.
It's still decent a guidance, but the previous one was as well.
The first food group listed is literally meat and dairy. The ordering here is purposeful, too, as they admit. One promo graphic includes a block of butter and a carton explicitly labelled "whole milk." This is a very definite downgrade.
Meat and dairy contain the bulk of the saturated fat in the average diet. It's pretty absurd to imagine a diet in which the largest food group is just meat and dairy, but due to the ordering, that almost seems to be implied.
The saturated fat → LDL-C → heart disease relationship has a lot of evidence and history behind it. A very interesting research project if you needed one. I call this advisory a "downgrade" because heart attack and stroke (among other conditions) are both: 1) downstream of saturated fat consumption, and 2) the most prevalent causes of death among people in the developed world.
It also very prominently shows red meat, which is the worst you can do.
fish > poultry > red meat. (Fish and poultry can be swapped, mercury is a real problem).
But really if you are looking for the healthiest proteins then you really can't do much better than nuts and beans.
Red meat beyond having a lot of links to heart disease is also linked to cancer. It should be seen as a treat, not the main thing you should be consuming.
One thing I think we should better emphasize is that it's best to avoid foods that are bad for you, than to eat foods that are good for you. If you can't do both, you should focus on cutting out bad foods over eating healthier foods.
Meat (non-processed, no sugary sauce or gravy), and dairy (plain, fermented, no added sugar). Those are kind of "neutral" foods. If that's all you eat, meaning you don't eat any crap, you're much better off health wise than if you eat crap and try to also eat a bunch of veggies, fish, fruits, legumes, etc.
The relationship between dairy/meat and inflammation is more nuanced than that. While some studies show associations with inflammatory markers, others find neutral or even anti-inflammatory effects depending on the type (e.g., grass-fed vs grain-fed, fermented vs non-fermented dairy) and individual metabolic context.
You're right that ratios matter enormously, but optimal ratios vary significantly by individual - genetics, activity level, metabolic health, and existing conditions all play roles. The overconsumption concern is valid for processed meats and in the context of sedentary lifestyles with excess calories, but the picture is less clear for whole-food animal proteins in balanced diets.
The real issue might be less about meat/dairy per se and more about displacement of other beneficial foods (fiber, polyphenols, etc) and overall dietary patterns. Many Americans do overconsume calories generally, but some subpopulations (elderly, athletes, those on restricted diets) may actually benefit from more protein.
why is meat inflammatory? is it they way it's farmed/raised?
because we have teeth specifically designed to get meat off bones and animals that don't eat meat and weren't "designed to" don't have teeth designed to clean meat off bones. and that's just one i came up with, off the cuff.
if it's current farming practices that make the meat/dairy bad for us, then fix that. But i don't currently believe there's a greater health benefit to taking a ton of supplements to replace the missing nutrients that meat and dairy give us that you absolutely cannot get from vegan diets without it becoming a monotonous pain in the neck.
> why is meat inflammatory? is it they way it's farmed/raised?
Not all meats are inflammatory. Processed and high temp cooked meats especially red are.
And I don't think we have the answer fully to why, but we know the lesser processed it is the better, and I believe I've seen some things about grass fed and all these more organically/traditional made meats seem to not be as inflammatory.
Also, we evolved during a period where we hunted, so even the idea of farmed meet maybe isn't really part of our evolution. But also, during our hunting evolution, we likely didn't have meat at every meals. Plus if you ever had game meat, it tastes really different and often isn't as good as what we farmed. So we kind of came to farm what tasted the best and was easy to farm, so it might be those meats aren't as good for us.
Also, you can't always assume that the environment we evolved in and the "natural" state is good for us. It wasn't bad enough for us to dwindle in numbers, but our population count was kept much lower than now and our life expectancies were shorter. As long as we made it to a healthy reproduction state evolution doesn't care. So all these inflammatory issues appear starting in your 30s and really become a problem much later in life. It's possible this didn't matter in evolutionary terms.
Lastly, you also have to take into context what else we'd do/eat. If our diets were more balanced than other things we would eat could neutralize some of that inflammation and meat has other vitamins and nutrients that are benefitial, but if someone cuts those other things out of their diet now the inflammation could become a problem.
Some herbivores too have huge canines[0] for territorial fights. I used to use mine to fight my brother but now I'm settled they only help tearing appart coconut, cowliflower and seitan.
You can get all the nutrients you need, easily, from a vegan diet, with the exception of B12 (a cheap supplement will cover that).
Also, human ‘canines’ are pretty pathetic. They’ll do the job in getting meat off bones, sure, but are nothing compared with my dog’s teeth – he has proper canines. (He also doesn’t have to prepare and cook meat before tucking in. Humans are actually pretty lame meat eaters even in comparison to other omnivores like dogs, let alone carnivores like lions.)
vitamin D? unless you live within 10 degrees of the equator "the sun" is not a valid answer.
The most available form of vitamin D comes from extracting the oil from sheep's wool/skin using chemicals (soap is a chemical, for the record.) Yes, it is possible to get a much weaker form of D from mushrooms, but not as they arrive, regardless of packaging. they have to be left outside in the sun for at least 8 hours, but ideally "two full days in the sun", cap-side up (facing the sun), and then a standard mushroom will have enough D2 for the average adult, maybe. I don't know the specific conversion from D2 to calciferol or whatever.
And before anyone decides to cite 30ng/ml or whatever as "recommended", i disagree, 90-105ng/ml is more "ideal" and 500IU of vitamin D supplements aren't going to cut it. it's 1 IU per 10 grams of body mass (roughly).
i can do this all day, it's a waste of both of our time. As lovely as vegetarian/veganism is in the abstract, the entire planet cannot be vegan any more than the entire planet can subsist off insects.
I think generally people are optimizing for health outcome and longevity, not peak athletic performance at your prime age.
But also, I've seen people often assume vegetarian or vegan diets are "healthy". But many people in India for example will still eat a lot of refined carbs, added sugars, fat heavy deep fried foods, large volumes of ghee or seed oils, etc. And total avoidance of animal products can also mean you have some deficiencies in nutrients that can be hard to obtain otherwise.
A plant-forward diet is more specific, like the Mediterranean diet, which itself isn't at all how your average Mediterranean person eats haha. But it involves no processed foods, no added sugar or excessive sugar, diverse set of nutrients by eating a balance of veggies, legumes, nuts, seeds, meats, dairy, fish, and so on all in appropriate proportions, as well as keeping overall caloric intake relatively low.
It's quite hard to eat that way to be honest haha.
Look - what do you expect from the vegans? To like it? From that comment I hear the pure "horrors". Meat! Whole milk!!! Can you imagine such crime! Sorry, I couldn't hold myself.
The first thing shown on the website is - broccoli.
The top of the pyramid includes both protein (meat, cheese) as well as fruits & vegetables.
The reason that meat is shown first is probably that it's the bigger change (it's been demonized in previous versions), whereas vegetables were always prominent.
The first thing on the website is indeed broccoli. But the first thing in the new inverted pyramid, both on the website and in other graphics of it, is meat. In fact, on the website, when you first get to "The New Pyramid", you'll first see only the left half, the one that has meat and other proteins; you'll have to scroll more to see the right half with vegetables and fruit.
I don't think it is meant to read left to right but top to bottom. Chicken and broccoli are top center, and that is the standard weight lifter meal plan. That said, human dietary needs vary individually by far more than any lobbied leaders will ever communicate.
The website is animated, so there's no question of which direction to read in, the left side literally pops up first lol. I can't lie, I miss websites that stood still, this could've just been a PDF.
BTW, you say "lobbied leaders" -- if you're talking about the scientists who have their names on this report, you'd be very correct. The "conflicting interests" section has loads of references to the cattle and dairy industries.
The only difference from the previous guidance is that it's suggesting eating more meat and dairy, which would come at the expense of veggies, legumes, nuts and seeds.
To be honest, I don't totally disagree from a practical angle. I think we have to acknowledge that most Americans failed to eat large portions of non-processed veggies, legumes, nuts and seeds. The next best thing might be to tell them, ok, at least if you're going to eat meat and dairy in large portions, make sure it's non-processed.
I've found for myself, it's hard to eat perfectly, but it's easier to replace processed foods and added sugar with simpler whole meats, fish and healthy fats like avocado, eggs, etc. And since those have higher satiety it helps with calorie control and so you avoid eating more snacks and treats which are heavily processed and sugary.
That said, in a purely evidence based health sense, it's not as good as the prior ratios from what I've seen of the research.
the rectangular pizzas were never "reheated". i have copies of the recipe cards to make enough trays of pizza to feed a school using the industrial kitchen appliances they have in schools.
and whatever your issue is with chocolate milk, can you link a recent survey that shows the percentage of say, americans, that have had 1 or more glasses of water in the last month? a glass being at least 8floz (1/4 liter or so)
i'm leaning toward "most people don't drink enough, if any, water; furthermore most people are probably varying levels of dehydrated", at least in the US. The fad of carrying water with you everywhere was lambasted into obscurity, at least in the american south. Anecdotally, many people have told me they drink 64 ounces a day, because diet coke counts and so does beer.
that a kid is getting a fortified delicious drink they enjoy is fine by me.
Adults should have no more than 30g of free sugars a day,
(roughly equivalent to 7 sugar cubes).
Children aged 7 to 10 should have no more than 24g
of free sugars a day (6 sugar cubes).
So one small carton they have at school has 30% of an adult's daily intake of added sugar.
And here in largely vegetarian India, everyone is now pushing for more protein and meats because a vegetable-heavy diet has been awful for our public health
If you want to actually get full and satiated with a largely vegetarian diet, you will eventually resort to carbs
And this is for a culture that really knows how to make smashingly good vegetarian dishes
I love my vegetables, but a vegetable-heavy diet is clearly not something that everyone can or should do. The people I know who retain their health with vegetarian/vegan diets are usually really well-versed in nutrition
If you look at a lot of the indian vegetarian dishes you'll find things like potatoes fried in butter being a staple.
Chickpeas and yogurt do make a showing, but a lot of indian dishes are devoid of vegetarian protein sources. You need a lot more beans/nuts if you want to eat healthy as a vegetarian.
Even if Indians ate 2x the meat that they do now, they wouldn’t consume anywhere as much as Americans do. Increasing meat consumption in America is not necessary.
India would do well to consume more protein, and the US would do well to consume less
has your government published any science on this? being completely serious, i'd like to read it. Is India mostly vegetarian because of lack of access to farms/meats, religious reasons, financial, or what? I didn't know it was largely vegetarian. I don't know i had an idea of the ratio or that it would be different than any other country.
Apparently the Mediterranean also is largely vegetarian. at least the eponymous diet is.
Most branches of hinduism condemn meat eating, so this has created a significant pressure against meat production (same as you'll find little production of pork in the Middle East and North Africa). This is not universal, of course, because historically many regions of India had large meat-eating muslim populations as well.
Note that this is typically lacto-ovo-vegetarianism, not veganism.
I fail to see the significance of your link to a group that opposes animal experimentation asking RFK Jr to reduce animal experimentation. Did you paste the wrong URL For the first link?
RFK is a retarded public health menace but him saying high protein low carb/low fat diet is generally good isn't retarded and only fat fricks would get mad about it
The original food pyramid was based on a world crafted by calory deficit and worked for it's time, but in a life of excess it causes mass obesity which is partly why americans are so fricking fat.
Isn't every single policy a result of some kind of lobby group? Are you saying that it's corrupt because it's been influenced by a lobby group? Would all policies then be corrupt to some degree? Or is it corrupt because you disagree with the lobby group?
Not all lobby groups are asking for harmful things. But nearly always they act in their own short sighted self interest. Which usually comes at the expense of citizens or the would be customers or competitors.
Which is why sane countries make paying for access and influence illegal.
So, that would be corrupt because you don't agree with it then?
Which are these sane countries? How do you think lobbying should work then? Everyone should get equal access? Hunter and gatherer man was egalitarian like that. Afaik it is a universal feature of civilization that this eventually breaks down. Of all the existent modes of dealing with this problem, money is probably one of the better ones compared to some historical or even contemporary alternatives. I actually will be very surprised if you come up with a single country that credibly makes "paying for access and influence illegal" as that is pretty much the history of all of human civilization, but I would welcome being surprised.
I'm a realist. All these comments were saying "oh this is good they're doing this for my personal health" and I thought "oh, no no no. That's not how this works..."
The irony is Tyson's is an absolutely horrendous organization and ruins food left and right. Not to mention the absurd living conditions for the animals they feed us.
There's some real science there for a couple of reasons. Protein is a macronutrient you can be malnourished if you don't get enough of even if you eat enough calories and the right micronutrients, and if most of your calories are from protein then you're actually probably not getting as many "burnable" calories as you think you are because (1) the amount of protein you need to meet your daily protein needs never enters the citric acid cycle to oxidized for ATP regeneration, (2) protein is the macronutrient that feels the most filling, and (3) excess protein that goes to the liver to be converted into carbs loses around 30% of its net usable calories due to the energy required for that conversion.
The way we count calories is based on how many calories are in a meal vs the resulting scat, and that just isn't an accurate representation of how the body processes protein such that a protein-heavy diet doesn't have as many calories as you probably think it does, which makes it a healthy choice in an environment where most food-related health problems stem from overeating.
However I agree with your skepticism insofar as when they say "prioritizing protein" they probably mean "prioritizing meat," which is more suspect from a health standpoint and looks somewhat suspicious considering the lobbyists involved.
Most Americans get plenty of protein without trying. It's hard to see how eating more meat should help unless you think the amount of protein actually needed is much more than what the May Clinic thinks: https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speak...
the "industry" obviously makes much more money on "highly processed" and branded foods - more intermediaries, more profits & margins
literally everyone can compete freely in the "whole unprocessed foods" market, and the only real differentiating factors will be quality & taste (as it should be)
Would you say the same thing about the covid vaccination campaigns during the Biden administration? Because billions of dollars were poured into those as well, with record profits for big pharma.
>Tyson foods and other meatpacking companies lobbied and funded RFK.
So? They are fighting fire with fire.
Or should sugar,casino and tobacco industries have all the lobbying
Also this doesn't surpass the minimal threshold for being shocked anymore, there's more critical shit going on, I can't be here being outraged at checks notes meat companies pushing that meat is healthy
Of note: the US's per capita consumption of meat has increased by more than 100 pounds over the last century[1]. We now consume an immense amount of meat per person in this country. That increase is disproportionately in poultry, but we also consume more beef[2].
A demand for the average American to eat more meat would have to explain, as a baseline, why our already positive trend in meat consumption isn't yielding positive outcomes. There are potential explanations (you could argue increased processing offsets the purported benefits, for example), but those are left unstated by the website.
That number seemed unreal to me, so I looked it up. I think it represents the total pre-processing weight, not the actual meat meat consumption. From Wikipedia:
> As an example of the difference, for 2002, when the FAO figure for US per capita meat consumption was 124.48 kg (274 lb 7 oz), the USDA estimate of US per capita loss-adjusted meat consumption was 62.6 kg (138 lb)
Processing, cutting into sellable pieces, drying, and spoilage/loss mean the amount of meat consumed is about half of that number.
Interestingly, ~12% of humans in the US are responsible for ~50% of beef consumption.
> The US is the biggest consumer of beef in the world, but, according to new research, it’s actually a small percentage of people who are doing most of the eating. A recent study shows that on any given day, just 12% of people in the US account for half of all beef consumed in the US.
> Men and people between the ages of 50 and 65 were more likely to be in what the researchers dubbed as “disproportionate beef eaters”, defined as those who, based on a recommended daily 2,200 calorie-diet, eat more than four ounces – the rough equivalent of more than one hamburger – daily. The study analyzed one-day dietary snapshots from over 10,000 US adults over a four-year period. White people were among those more likely to eat more beef, compared with other racial and ethnic groups like Black and Asian Americans. Older adults, college graduates, and those who looked up MyPlate, the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) online nutritional educational campaign, were far less likely to consume a disproportionate amount of beef.
(my observation of this is that we can sunset quite a bit of US beef production and still be fine from a food supply and security perspective, as consumption greatly exceeds healthy consumption limits in the aggregate)
> A recent study shows that on any given day, just 12% of people in the US account for half of all beef consumed in the US
By itself, this figure doesn't really mean much. On any given day, less than 1% of people have birthdays, but that doesn't mean there's a small percentage of people who are having most of the birthdays
The following paragraph is more valid, but the 12% figure still seems dubious.
I'm sorry but is nobody reading TFA? It quite specifically is saying there's a population of disproportionate meat eaters, noting that they're older, they're whiter, and influenced by cultural traditions normalizing it.
It's not just saying it pops out of the data as a statistical curiosity, it's saying that there is a real subset of the population who are disproportionately eating more beef.
> By itself, this figure doesn't really mean much. On any given day, less than 1% of people have birthdays, but that doesn't mean there's a small percentage of people who are having most of the birthdays
Yeah, it just means that half the beef eaten per day goes to the 12% having a BBQ, etc, not that only 12% of the population have access to half the beef available each day
i'm over 40; this is anecdotal, but I've talked to a lot of people all over the country; however i'm not asserting this is 100% factual:
in the US most days include a meat in at least 1 meal. Now, i'm framing this as "fish, eggs, fowl". Cereal with milk, bagel with cream cheese, not meat, but meat adjacent. Waffles have eggs. we love "deli meats" in the US, every store has a deli counter where you can get meat sliced right before your own eyes; or you can go to the 4-8 door cold case where the pre-sliced meats are. And dinner, well i can think of a couple of vegetarian dishes that are "staples" like red beans and rice (can be vegan/vegetarian), or pasta with marinara (vegetarian).
When presented with something like the Mediterranean diet, most americans would balk at the bird and rabbit food they were now expected to eat.
I can expand, but yes, meat is like, a huge deal in the US. Especially beef. part of it is our chicken and pork is kinda bland and merely "just food" but our beef ranges from "ok if i'm real hungry" to "really very good, actually". Fish is hit and miss, depends where you live in the US as to how popular it is. also most of the cow is used for food in the US, very little is wasted, to my understanding. brain, eyes, tongue, glands, lungs, etc are all sold, bones sold as fertilizer, hide is obviously leather, and so on.
for the record i wish animals were treated better, in fact, i have been searching for a local beef farmer for a decade and all the ones i run in to sell their beef to texas!
gp is likely referring to a specific diet called The Mediterranean Diet, "inspired by the eating habits and traditional foods of Greece, Italy, and the Mediterranean coasts of France and Spain, as observed in the late 1950s to early 1960s."
I think most Americans would consider those foods very "exotic."
I was an adult before I ever ate chickpeas (in any form), really any beans outside of Taco Bell refried beans, eggplant (in any form), tzatziki, any sort of flatbread, lentils, avocado, zucchini, cauliflower. Etc.
Define BBQ; in the US it means two things depending on the location; Southern style slow cooked meat that falls apart on your fork, or grilling?
If you mean grilling, at least every 8 days! Hopefully more often than that! And what's the issue? I can cook indoors or outside the same meal but avoid the smoke and heating the house.
The phrasing strongly suggests exactly the opposite. Essentially, the whole framing of the linked guardian article is that there is a specific population which are the "disproportionate beef eaters".
The phrasing you’re looking for is that 12% of Americans consume an average of 50% of beef consumed every day.
By saying “on any given day” you are suggesting it’s a different 12%. The article does confuse this by identifying cohorts that eat more beef. But it’s a tautological label based on the survey data. They identify some correlates, like being a 50 something male. But there are males who are 50 something that don’t eat any beef. They’re not included in the 12%.
The 12% is just the outcome of the sample. It doesn’t mean they’re a consistent cohort.
Example:
* on any given day x million women give birth
* there are x million women who give birth every day
And from the study linked, that framing/suggestion would be incorrect (at least for the numbers given). "the 12% are not the same every day" is an accurate interpretation. They asked about what people ate _yesterday_...
Again, the whole premise of the article is that there really is such a thing as disproportionate beef eaters (DBE), and it spends time talking about this group explicitly. So the wording doesn't suggest otherwise, it explicitly suggests this is a real group.
Regarding the study this is a both can be true situation. There can be (1) a population who is disproportionate in their beef eating, and (2) a study about 12% doing the most on any given day can count in favor of that group being real and (3) not everyone from the daily 12% is part of the DBE group. It's more likely a venn diagram overlap, and where it doesn't overlap, people who aren't part of the DBE are incidentally in that 12% while being closer to average in the aggregate over the longer term. Those facts can all sit together comfortably without amounting to a contradiction.
> is it normal, in the USA, for half of all people to only eat beef once every 8 days?
Thats not the implication of 12% of Americans eating 50% of beef by consumed by all Americans that day.
If I had to make up some numbers it’s probably that, on any random day, 12% of Americans ate 50% of the beef (a large burger), 28% of American ate the rest of the beef (bit of lunch meat), and 60% of Americans did not eat any beef.
> Interestingly, ~12% of humans in the US are responsible for ~50% of beef consumption.
Go on...
> One limitation of this work is that it was based on 1-day diet recalls, so our results do not represent usual intake[0].
Ah.
[0]: Demographic and Socioeconomic Correlates of Disproportionate Beef Consumption among US Adults in an Age of Global Warming
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/15/17/3795
> defined as those who, based on a recommended daily 2,200 calorie-diet, eat more than four ounces... daily.
This sounds like.. not very much. I eat 6-7oz of ground beef with breakfast alone, pretty much daily! Are people really eating less than ~1/2 cup of meat over all their meals combined?
> Are people really eating less than ~1/2 cup of meat over all their meals combined?
Your mind is going to be blown when you learn about vegetarians!
I'm in the US and was raised on a pretty standard diet. As a young adult, I stopped eating beef for environmental reasons. As an older adult (50s) I mostly stopped eating most meat for environmental and ethical reasons. I don't call myself a vegetarian and don't make a fuss when vegetarian options aren't available (eg, eating at a friend's house).
That is all to say: I haven't noticed any difference in my health either way, but that isn't why I (95%) stopped eating meat.
6oz of beef is only 44g of protein; a moderate gym load would require more for many adult men. Typical might be more like 75-100g. (Recommendations I’ve heard is 2g per 1 kg of muscle mass; roughly 40% of your weight at moderate fitness.)
I’m a large guy (190cm/100kg); I lose weight eating a pound of bacon for breakfast and a pound of chicken for dinner, if I’m even moderately exercising (3x cardio, 3x strength each week). Thirty minutes a day, split between strength and cardio is hardly “top athlete” and more “recommended amount”.
That’s not to say anybody is wrong, merely our experiences may be as varied as humans are — ie, we may legitimately have different needs.
Well the point of nutrition research is to account for that kind of thing. And it's true enough that men and women have specifically different protein needs. But person-to-person variation doesn't scale up into pure randomness. The reason it's possible to make meaningful population level nutrition recommendations is precisely because of broadly shared commonalities, about what is both good and bad for us.
Except the people hallucinating that we need to eat more meats. A couple of people requiring more caloric/protein intake doesn't make it reasonable for everyone to take in more
The advice to cut processed foods is solid and is something we have been saying for decades.
Due to digestion protein is also much lighter on calories then the baseline would suggest (15% less then the measured value can be typical) - dependent highly on preparation of course (I.e. the typical American steak prep of "first I'm adding half a stick of butter..." kind of ruins the benefit).
Habits vary (vegans exist!) And I agree 4 oz is a pretty small portion. But I don't think I personally know very many people who eat beef daily. For me and my family it is once or twice a week.
4 oz (a quarter pound) is 100 g or an amount about the size of the palm of your hand -- a single serving. It's not a small portion, it's recommended standard portion.
If you were following the old food guide in use for the last 20 years -- the one that replaces the food pyramid -- you'd see that 100 g is about a quarter of your plate. The old food guide could be summed up as "a quarter of your plate should be protein, a quarter carbs, and half fruits and vegetables". Real simple, so simple anyone could understand it. Although I have been presented with evidence recently that there are some who can not.
I eat meat (beef, pork, poultry, and fish) maybe three or four meals a week, and probably about 6 to 8 oz per meal when I eat it. So on a per day basis, yeah, I probably eat about 3-4 ounces of meat per day.
But the source you were quoting was about beef alone. So these are people who eat more beef daily than I eat of any meat.
Sometimes I wonder how is it possible that cattle alone severely outweighs all livestock on the planet, and by a very huge margin (like 10 to 1), then I read about such dietary habits.
I eat meat too, but I don't eat it every day so if you average it over time it will likely be around those numbers.
Outliers are more likely to post their experiences, and those unusual experiences are then also more likely to be shared. It can make for a skewed perception of the world if someone consumes a lot of media (or other secondhand information) and allows it to shape their worldview.
And to your point, I think the psychology of someone in the comment section is to react to broad statements like they are Sudoku puzzle where you can "solve" by finding an exception to a broad statement, however rare the exception.
The administration putting out the "eat more meat" guidance is simultaneously telling everyone they need to work out. The recommendation seems consistent when their started goal is to change current "American" habits.
every breakfast joint near me in California has some sort of variation on hamburg steak & eggs. Judging by the fact that it's on every menu, it must be popular to some degree.
I was thinking more as a unit of measurement, but yeah, sorry that was poorly written on my part, sorry.
> every breakfast joint near me in California has some sort of variation on hamburg steak & eggs. Judging by the fact that it's on every menu, it must be popular to some degree.
Sure. The diners near me have that kind of stuff too, just, if I went to a diner every morning my heart would probably revolt after about a month.
There is a substantial body of evidence that much red meat is wildly not good for you, especially when you consume it as consistently as you're saying you do.
There’s a substantial body of evidence that consuming the average American diet while also being mostly sedentary is terrible for you. I’m unclear how much of the data gathered about red meat specifically can be meaningfully decoupled from all the confounding factors, though.
A study of people who eat almost exclusively whole foods that do not include red meat vs people who eat almost exclusively whole foods that do include meaningful amounts of red meat would be really interesting.
When so much red meat is consumed as greasy burgers coupled with white bread buns and deep fried potatoes, I don’t know how to decouple the impact of the red meat from the rest of it. I fear the “red meat bad” stuff might be the inverse of the “oh, it’s clearly the wine” silliness for why French people are healthier.
I believe that they try to, but I have serious doubts about how effective it is. Dietary science is littered with examples of incorrect guidance driven by data we misinterpreted. Remember when a generation of people were told to eat low fat and they all got fatter? Remember trans fats replacing saturated? Remember when we told everyone that drinking alcohol in moderation was healthier than not drinking at all?
Most dietary studies are observational, which means there is no control group and no blinding. It’s a deep dive into data (largely self-reported) with an attempt to control the endless variables by slicing and dicing the data to hopefully end up with groups that can be meaningfully compared.
There are plenty of studies that take place outside north america saying the same thing.[1], for example. If you insist on this not being true thats fine, everyone gets to think whatever they want, but you're clearly not supported by the data in saying so.
This is exactly what I’m talking about. You cited a study that does not support the claim that red meat is unhealthy.
> After correction for measurement error, higher all-cause mortality remained significant only for processed meat
This is in the abstract. You don’t even have to open the actual report to see this. Without even getting into whether or not this study controlled correctly for all possible variables, even they themselves had to acknowledge that the link between red meat and mortality is at best weak.
There is so much of this sort of misinterpretation when it comes to dietary science that it’s really hard to know what information is accurate and what information is being misrepresented or misunderstood.
So you have effectively zero protein with breakfast, are you eating four chicken breasts for dinner or something? Or are you protein-deficient.. if so, it seems the guidance in OP is meant to correct people like you.
I only mentioned it because I really struggled with hitting protein targets unless I made sure I had a good portion of meat with every meal.
In OP, they say "Protein target: ~0.54–0.73 grams per pound of body weight per day". Given that an average male weighs 200lbs in the US[1], we're looking for 108-146g protein/day. If your protein only comes from chicken breasts, and given that an average (52g) chicken breast has 16g of protein[2], you'd have to eat 8 chicken breasts per day to fulfill those requirements. Factoring in your other meat (something with lunch, and a bit from other sources like cheese), if you skip meat in your breakfast, yeah, you'd need like four with dinner to hit targets.
Your diet is your business of course, but I'd consider tracking your diet for a few days to see how the numbers add up.
I don't know where "1 unit" comes from, but the Portion menu lists 1 unit as 52g, and 0.5 breast as 86g. So 1 unit is about one third of one. Using the numbers on that site, you'd need 2-2.7 average skinless breasts to reach the target 108-146g, which is a lot more reasonable. And that assumes there's zero other protein being consumed.
I hope your numbers were more accurate when you determined you were struggling with hitting targets....
Oh yeah that's odd. What a weird measurement. Maybe a "serving" is considered a third?
No, I bought a kitchen scale and did everything by weight, it seemed like the only sensical solution. This is probably a good time to plug Cronometer! I'm not affiliated, just been a happy paying customer for a few years now. https://cronometer.com/
> Drying doesn't mean anything... The nutrients are still there you're only really losing water.
The problem with the number is that people see it and imagine pounds of meat like they see at the grocery store, but it's measuring pounds of meat that go into the meat processing plant.
> What evidence do you have that the loss adjusted numbers have gone down while the preprocessed numbers have gone up so dramatically?
No, the two numbers show the ratio.
The "pounds of meat consumed per person" from the FAO is a pre-processed weight.
The pounds of meat consumed per person from the USDA is the end-user weight. It's about half of the FAO number.
Well if it’s based on weight, and one of the steps is to reduce the weight significantly…
Point being someone eating a couple bags of jerky over a workday would probably count as having eaten literal pounds of beef, despite consumed weight being much lower. Water is noncompressible and makes your stomach full very quickly.
I'm a weightlifter and as part of my training, I eat pretty close to about a pound of meat a day during bulk, usually about 12-14oz. This is because I need to eat about 200g of protein a day. I supplement it with protein shakes.
I find that to be a challenging amount of meat. It's a lot! And to find out that's average???
I am not a weightlifter, I am an amateur powerlifter, and I do pretty intense resistance training for my age (54yo) and my weight (112kg) and I eat about 800g to 1kg a day of meat - duck, pork or beef. Even if I eat 1kg Wagyu beef, it would give me about 3000 calories, slightly less than 3500 calories I need to keep my muscle mass. I would happily eat even more meat but circumstances prevents me to do so.
I used to drink protein shakes, but now I am actively against these. Artificial sweeteners provoke insulin release [1] [2] that leads to type-II diabetes.
you can get protein powder that doesn't contain artificial sweeteners. You can get protein powder that doesn't contain any sweetener. You can even buy pure protein powder without any additives at all.
You can get protein powder without flavoring. I drink that either pure or with a little bit of flavored protein mixed in (something like 3:1) because the flavored stuff is so sweet I can't drink it. Some brands I could literally do 3 parts flavorless, 1 part flavored and it would still taste too sweet.
I guess it's a matter of perspective and what you're used to. Some indigenous North American peoples used to subsist largely on bison for at least part of the year and often consumed 5 pounds or more of meat and other animal products per day. Was that too much?
I too try for 200g of protein/day, with meat and supplements by shakes. It’s difficult to eat more meat than that, because of how it fills you up, its prep requirements and its cost.
I don’t believe that the average American eats nearly a pound of meat per day. I do believe if the average American ate meat before carbs, we could get there, and all be a lot healthier, though.
For me, processed carbs make me much hungrier, but the kale salad I’m eating right now makes me less hungry.
200g a day? Are you a big guy? I did an experiment in my 20s on building muscle on a plant based diet, and managed to gain 10kg in one year (muscle mass, confirmed by a DEXA scan). Total weight gain was about 16kg. Most of the surplus was water.
I started at 70kg (181cm), so pretty skinny, and without prior resistance training. I ate between 120and 140g of protein per day, without any shakes.
I am aware that these gains would not have continued, but my body obviously had more than enough with 130g to build muscle. I did eat a calorie surplus, but
The latest in body building science recommends 1g of protein per day per 1lb of body mass (or 2.2g per 1kg for metric folks).
> I ate between 120and 140g of protein per day, without any shakes.
How did you do that in a plant based diet? What were your largest sources of protein? (To be clear: I'm doubting that you did it. I am genuinely curious.)
> The latest in body building science recommends 1g of protein per day per 1lb of body mass (or 2.2g per 1kg for metric folks).
I wasn't that serious about the whole thing, but I read somewhere that the benefits decline rapidly after 1.6g/kg bodyweight. That was the reason I didn't do any shakes.
> How did you do that in a plant based diet
Beans and whole grains. I realized that fat intake was limiting my protein access so I cut fat down do between 10 and 20% of energy intake. That means you have to chew down a whole lot of bulgur and beans. I ate about 3000 calories (I do a lot of swimming) and then you only need about 18% of energy from protein to reach 140g. Easy peasy.
I also made my own firm tofu (i was cheap). I could easily eat 200g of tofu a day.
Definitely possible - I used to get 100g easily. Simple example would be some granola (with lots of nuts/seeds) with soya milk for breakfast, big tofu scramble for lunch, poki bowl with lots of veg, edamame and tempeh for dinner.
You could probably just do this with big portions to get to 130 tbh.
This is very true, and something that people pushing keto (myself included) had to learn the hard way.
There are satiety indexes for different foods but they are not universal. I can eat almost unlimited carbs and never feel full. I'll eat multiple plates full of bread or a thousand calories in french fries and then move on to the main course.
6oz of lean meat and some salad and I'm good with 500 or so calories on my plate.
I honestly don't get how potatoes supposedly fill people up. I have made twice baked potatoes before and eaten an easy 2000 calories of them along side thanksgiving dinner.
In contrast right now I'm eating clean and doing a body recomp. Eating clean is super satiating, for me at least!
> I have made twice baked potatoes before and eaten an easy 2000 calories of them along side thanksgiving dinner.
Try plain boiled potatoes. I bet you feel like stopping long before 2000 Calories. Tasty things are tasty and often easy to eat an unhealthy amount of.
This is the thing that makes any conversation about broad categories of food difficult—there’s just a huge range of ways to package those carbs, and people eat a ton of “hyper palatable” foods. A few hundred calories of Smartfood popcorn with a day’s worth of sodium and addicting flavors is quite different in my experience than, say, a few slices of chewy, crusty sourdough bread.
Well, if you've ever cooked down a cabbage or spinach or whatever, you'll see it basically takes up no space whatsoever... so yeah, kale on its own will take a while to fill you up.
Maybe true! I eat a bunch (like the formal term of 1 unit) of kale in my daily salad. That seems to be enough, alongside some Greek yogurt and blueberries to maintain me for a few hours.
Can’t help eating junk carbs when I see them, though.
I've been cooking more with lentils as well, so many cheap tasty recipes. I've been following this chickpea hack (cooking in microwave for like 5ish) to great success. Microwaving the chickpeas splits them into a crispy texture, then after that it's very flexible to create all kinds of dishes:
My favorite is pan frying them in a hot sauce + aromatics for a quick chickpea rice bowl, I even gotten into the habit of using chickpeas as a chicken replacement for many of my Mexican dishes.
If you're use to the typical American diet, please try cooking more lentils! Very tasty, filling dishes, low on costs and high on nutrients.
chicken 100g/27g of protein
chickpeas 100g/19g of protein
That's a good ratio for something that costs less than a dollar a can compared to chicken.
fwiw at the level of protein i need to eat to build muscle mass (im weight training 3x a week), even that 27 vs 19 difference starts to become a problem.
people don't realize how challenging it is to eat 200g of protein a day, every day, for months, without eating like 3000cal lol
that said, i do eat a lot of plant based protein. i love chickpeas and i also fuck w tofu a lot.
There’s a pretty versatile and tasty milk product called tvoroh in eastern/Central Europe. It has about 18g of protein, and 0-10% fat depending on what you’re buying. So for low fat options it can be as low as 70-90kkal/100g with 18g of protein.
What is the problem of consuming say 80-100% of whey protein? Not all of it has sweeteners.
> What is the problem of consuming say 80-100% of whey protein?
Well, for starters, that'd be completely fucking joyless. And on top of that, meat contains other nutrients that I'd have to account for (which is not hard tbh, but requires a little bit of studying and planning).
> tasty milk product called tvoroh
My gallbladder has never been at 100% and as a result, I have to eat a relatively low fat diet. This is not something a normal person faces. I eat a fair amount of low fat greek yogurt, though. Similar concept.
(I am from Eastern Europe). "Tvorog" / "Творог" is almost identical to commonly available cottage cheese. I buy the latter in big tubs from Costco and eat it almost every day for breakfast (with whatever fruits are on hand, or with raisins and nuts in the worst case).
Yeah, I actually learned how to make it myself, although it requires access to kefir/piimä, or making it yourself first. Once you have it, it’s very easy to make it, although often unnecessary when local eastern shops have it quite cheap.
Not sure about availability in the US, in EU cottage cheese often is sold as much more creamy spread, like Philadelphia cheese.
You may be calling it "quark" then? From a quick search:
"The two most common translations of tvorog are cottage cheese (common in the US) and quark (common in Germany). The process of making these different cheeses is quite similar: you take fermented, acidized or sour milk, and separate the curds from the whey. For cottage cheese, cream is added to the curds before they’re packaged, and for quark, the curds are not overly dried so the curds come out quite soft and creamy. Tvorog, on the other hand, is most often packaged as dry grainy pieces of curd."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzsEqV0Bjcs - that lecture refers a simple formulae to compute protein content from the amount of nitrogen. They count nitrogen in grams, then multiply by 6 to get amount of "available" protein. But, any antinutrients such as cyanides will count as proteins by this calculation.
Lentils contain trypsin inhibitors, which contain inordinate amount of nitrogen that is counted as protein.
While you do not eat these directly after cooking your lentils, you do not eat as much protein as you would think you do.
lentils carb/protein ratio isn't great. you still need to supplement it with protein (whey or pea). i eat a fair amount of lentils, but mostly as a carb source (like white rice). even tofu's ratio isn't good enough. i do eat a lot of tofu though, because i like it
back of the hand math suggests id have to eat a kg of dry lentils a day to reach my protein requirements. that's gotta be what, 2800 cal? edit: 800g of lentils for 200g of protein, 2500 cal.
im just thinking out loud here, but lentils alone wouldn't be adequate for me.
You would just eat more protein dense plant foods like tempeh, extra firm tofu, and seitan which is the most protein dense food.
If the only food in your pantry were seitan, you’d have to eat 260g (960cal) of it to hit 200g protein. It’s not that much food.
Most people haven’t tried it but asian stores may sell it next to tofu as “vegan chicken/beef”. It has a nice texture that you can cube and treat like chicken in a stir fry.
I started tracking everything I ate, every single bite.
The average western diet may over consume meat, but I have to work my butt off to hit my protein goals for strength training.
A slice of bacon has 3g of protein. 150 calories though. Eating enough protein through bacon isn't the best of ideas, even if someone is doing a ketogenic diet!
60-80g of protein is about right for a man who has a moderately physical job or who exercises some small amount. 100g is the minimum for putting on muscle and getting stronger.
The average western diet over consumes everything, it could do with less sugar, less processed foods (which are hyper palatable and don't satiate hunger), and more pure protein.
Because American men average around five nine and given the average lean muscle mass needs on that frame size, something within 60-90g (which is a huge range!) will work for most American men.
Like if someone is a 6 foot 10 body builder, they know their needs.
Also the suggested range of g/kg ranges from .8g/kg to 1.2g/kg, which is also a huge range, but that is primarily for building strength, not maintaining.
Given the goals here are "rough guidelines on eating healthy", I'm fine saying most men should aim for 60-90g of lean protein a day. That isn't exactly a hot take.
That question is, honestly, kind of stupid. It is akin to asking why eat healthy or why go outside in the sun.
But hey, here we go.
1. Intense physical exercise is the only known way to increase IQ. (Admittedly pure strength training is not the best for this, HIIT workouts are better)
2. Muscle mass is a huge factor in the early death in seniors. Basically people who lack muscle mass are more likely to fall over and fracture something, at which point they are much more likely to die.
3. Lean muscle mass, up to a certain point (e.g. extreme body builders have worse mortality numbers), decreases mortality across the board.
4. I like living w/o pain, and you can choose to either have your joints take the load or your muscles take the load.
5. I enjoy being able to move my body and be active in the world.
6. I'm vain and I like to look good.
> most people don't.
Most people in America die of a heart attack. Most people in America are obese and have troubles moving around. Most people in America don't read books. Most people in America don't enjoy mathematics. Most people in America don't go to art museums.
People should have aspirations to do more than average.
Depending on the type of training you're doing, you're likely eating lean meat too, like chicken breasts and fish. Most people are much less picky about the kind of meat they eat, opting for fatty cuts or meat products high in salt and saturated fats.
David Bars, while not even close to anything resembling a whole food, have made hitting macros so much easier. End up being cheaper than chicken, per gram of protein per calorie, sometimes too!
Would be important to see how that number is being computed? If it is the amount of meat sold divided by number of people it may be misleading since there is a fair amount of wastage particularly in places like schools etc with kids filling plates that are never consumed.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. There is even more trimming that goes on as well. Chefs trim what's ordered, tallow may be rendered for non-consumptive reasons, and so on. Like a poster above, as an athlete I eat more meat than most people, and I don't seem to eat those numbers... I feel like we are missing some data points.
Have you considered not bothering to bulk or cut and instead just maintain? Maybe you are saying that but I can’t tell. I lift 5-6 days a week but neither bulk nor cut. Just eating/consuming whatever is necessary to maintain and/or hit goals when I feel like it.
That's an immense amount of cholesterol. You might consider replacing some or all of it with plant-based sources. (Many protein shakes are made with whey powder, which also contains cholesterol.)
Heart disease is a real risk. Don't ignore it. It's not something that only happens to other people.
Also, you need to adjust for demographics. In 1900, 35% of the population was under 15: https://demographicchartbook.com/index.php/chapter-5-age-and.... Today it’s only 19%. Children and babies obviously eat a lot less meat than adults, and they make up a much smaller share of the population today than back then.
There’s a restaurant in Las Vegas, the Heart Attack Grill, which sarcastically plays on this trope.
> It has become internationally famous for embracing and promoting an unhealthy diet of incredibly large hamburgers. Customers are referred to as "patients," orders as "prescriptions," and the waitresses as "nurses." All those who weigh over 350 pounds are invited to unlimited free food provided they weigh themselves on an electronic cattle scale affront a cheering restaurant crowd.
> The menu includes the Single Bypass Burger®, Double Bypass Burger®, Triple Bypass Burger®, Quadruple Bypass Burger®, Quintuple Bypass Burger™, Sextuple Bypass Burger™, Septuple Bypass Burger™, and the Octuple Bypass Burger™. These dishes range in weight from half a pound to four pounds of beef. Also on the menu are Flatliner Fries® (cooked in pure lard) and the Coronary Dog™, Lucky Strike no filter cigarettes, alcohol, Butterfat Milkshakes™, full sugar Coca-Cola, and candy cigarettes for the kids!
Real sugar Coca-Cola is delicious though, and while this may just be a personal anecdote, real sugar soda always makes me feel full and satiated, while I've been able to drink several cans of corn syrup soda in a sitting before, I can't imagine doing that with several cans of real sugar soda. The calories are pretty much the same!
Was very confused by this comment, until I looked it up. It seems, sweet beverages and candies in the U.S. are not sweetened with sucrose (table sugar) like in most places on earth. Instead, they use fructose (fruit sugar) syrup.
Many foods in the United States are sweetened with high fructose corn syrup (which is very cheap compared to cane sugar because growing corn is very cheap in the United States because of climate, infrastructure, and extensive government subsidies). In soft drinks, the syrup is roughly 55% fructose, 45% glucose.
Table sugar is usually sucrose, which is a compound sugar (disaccharide) comprised of one fructose and one glucose molecule. In many bottled soft drinks, the low pH of the beverage hydrolyzes the sucrose into its component sugars, resulting in a solution of 50% fructose and 50% glucose.
Chemically, we're comparing a 55/45 mixture of fructose and glucose to a 50/50 mixture of fructose and glucose. HFCS has become a bogeyman in American society, but evidence since the 1980s seems to show that, when it comes to soda, the excess fructose isn't nearly as bad as the whole "recreationally drinking 40g of instantly available sugar" part.
Mexican coke does taste different, but it may have more to do with the other flavorants and the bottling process than the source of the sugar.
Looks like some HFCS-sweetened soda pop has up to a 70/30 fructose/glucose ratio. It's also worth noting that corn syrup contains maltose and various polysaccharides not present in table sugar, but I think most of that is refined out in colas, since there only seems to be 1% maltose present in the colas analyzed by this paper.
No, they use "high fructose corn syrup", which is, just like table sugar, a mix of fructose and glucose (sucrose is 50% fructose and 50% glucose). The increase in the fructose fraction in HFCS over table sugar is single-digit percentage.
It's not "fructose" vs "sucrose", it's a difference between something that's 50% fructose and 50% glucose (table sugar) and something that is 42% fructose and 53% glucose (corn syrup).
What happens is that the excess of protein stays in your system, but, if you don't use the nutrient by exercising, the caloric excess will obviously make you fat.
"These findings demonstrate that the magnitude and duration of the anabolic response to protein ingestion is not restricted and has previously been underestimated in vivo in humans."
It says 1.2-1.6 grams of protein and healthy fats per kilogram of body weight, from animal and plant sources (including milk). Is that really advocating for more meat?
The implication is that the current food pyramid disproportionately weights against proteins and fats. Assuming that Americans follow the current pyramid (this is a hell of an assumption), then any change to the pyramid that asks them to change their diets in favor of more protein and fat is likely to result in them eating more meat.
In reality, I don't think anybody in the US follows the food pyramid religiously. But I do think people (try to) follow the main strokes of what the government tells them is a healthy dietary balance, and so any recommendation to increase their fat/protein intake will result in more meat consumption even if the guidelines doesn't itself proscribe that as the only source.
I agree, and think particularly where there children are concerned at least some parents will try to follow official dietary guidelines to make sure their kids grow up healthy and with healthy habits.
> But I do think people (try to) follow the main strokes of what the government tells them is a healthy dietary balance...
Do you really observe that in your circles? I've lived in 6 different states, from Maryland to Idaho, and I've never got an impression that many people take any real though or consideration for their health at all. If anything, I'd armchair guestimate something like 10% of adults seem to put any real attention of effort into their health. I feel like late teens to late college year people put more effort in general, but only because they themselves are on the meat market and don't usually have complex lives (kids, careers)
As I see it, the point of this new pyramid is not to add more emphasis to meat specifically, but to undo some of the past vilification of fat (note the emphasis on whole milk and full fat dairy), and to move emphasis away from carbs as the basis of the diet. And honestly, I think that's pretty much correct - the low fat movement was a disaster for our collective health, because food manufacturers added more sugar to compensate for the bad effects on taste that that has, and because if you eat a good amount of full fat stuff, there's not nearly as much need to snack between meals.
If you go to Western Europe, they're not drinking lots of skim milk, and if you eat things from the bakeries, there's more butter and not as much low quality vegetable oil or sugar. When my French cousins come here, they find lots of the stuff sold here revoltingly sweet.
First, a grain of salt, I'm certainly not an expert, I've just read a bit about the subject.
You know how people like cold pressed extra virgin olive oil? Or avocado oil? Those are "high quality". Industrially refined/deodorized/hexane-extracted soybean, corn, non-high-oleic sunflower/safflower oil, canola tend to be considered to be on the opposite end of the spectrum.
Deodorizing causes the oil to oxidize, as does deep frying, and that makes a variety of nasty byproducts that seem likely to cause systemic inflammation. And from here on HN the other day, "Inflammation now predicts heart disease better than cholesterol" https://www.empirical.health/blog/inflammation-and-heart-hea...
People in this thread are scoffing at RFK saying that beef tallow fries are "healthy", and while I wouldn't go that far, there seems to be good evidence that it's much healthier to deep fry in beef tallow than the soybean oil most switched to in the 90s. Beef tallow is high in saturated fat, which tends to be relatively stable under heat, and very low in polyunsaturated fats, which tend to be the fats that oxidize the worst. Soybean oil, on the other hand, is extremely high in polyunsaturated fat (60% vs 2-4% for beef tallow). And the big problem with commercial deep frying is that the oil is frequently just topped off rather than replaced, so those oxidization byproducts build up over time. More stable fat is really important there.
I also don't know how relevant this is, but soybean frying oil tends to have silicone-based anti-foaming agents mixed in (polydimethylsiloxane is the one I've seen most commonly) - you can find this in the big jugs at Costco if you want to check it out. Silicone generally doesn't seem great to be swallowing - I think it's pretty inert, but it seems likely to me to have mechanical properties that your body's not quite used to dealing with effectively. This is just me being biased about eating something that's pretty obviously not food, though, I haven't seen much on the subject.
Hydrogenated oils are now well known to be bad (trans fats). So Crisco/creamed vegetable shortening, very low quality.
So yeah, there are higher and lower quality oils, especially once they've been degraded via high heat over a long period and oxygen exposure in commercial or industrial frying processes.
Actual human RCTs do not show any increased systemic inflammation when consuming seed oils like canola vs. animal fats, and saturated fat consumption from animal cooking fats can still drive cardiovascular risk, even if it is not the singular cause.
Fried foods are bad for you regardless. The idea that one could swap out a seed oil for some other fat and keep all of their bad habits otherwise in place and magically become healthy is a fantasy.
Interesting, thanks. Know of where to read the random trial results? Did they clear the chemically separated/deodorized oils from suspicion? While I err on the side of avoiding them, I don’t have too strong an opinion on this, because like I said, not an expert.
Why are fried foods bad for you? It’s commonly held wisdom, but I’m curious what the mechanics are, to see if there’s a way to mitigate it. Is it something other than the oxidation products that I mentioned? And if it is those, would a more stable fat not fare better? I guess there’s the changes to the food from the high temps in both cases.
Something to note is the acknowledgements, though: “This work was supported by the Soy Nutrition Institute Global, United Soybean Board, Corn Refiners of America, National Corn Growers Association, Canola Council of Canada and USA Canola Association. These funders had no role in the design, analysis or writing of this article.”
Doesn’t mean it’s junk, but also probably not totally disinterested science, since continued funding is probably contingent on them being happy with the results.
EDIT: from what I read, it was mostly a high level summary of literature wihh th some conclusions like high polyunsaturated fat is good for reducing ldl levels, it mentioned at the end that you shouldn’t reuse deep frying oil, try to keep oil under smoke point, some other things like that. Didn’t see much about inflammation, but I didn’t read too carefully, just skimmed.
These numbers are actually "disappearance" they include an immense amount of food waste as well so the average American is probably almost half a body builder and leaving food on their plate at a restaurant while more of it is going bad at home and in their grocery.
1.5g/kg for a 90kg person is 135g. You can get almost half that daily need from a chicken breast or a few ounces of fish. Two meals of that and a few non-meat things like rice and beans, lentils, peanut butter, etc and you're set, even towards the higher end of the recommended range. That's doesn't seem outrageous at all.
And here I am thinking that 50-100g of protein per day for an elderly person was way too low.
But here we have the problems with the numbers and why they should only be guidelines. Consumption of protein needs to increase as you get old (into the range we consider for athletes). And basing consumption on body weight is stupid, because telling an obese person they need to eat twice as much protein as a non-obese person is probably wrong.
yeah, and it’s also worth noting that the usual guidelines you hear like “eat 1g of protein for each pound you weigh” are actually meant to be 1g of protein per pound of lean mass, which for many people is significantly smaller amount.
The public health discourse about protein is in a weird place right now. The recommendations are higher than ever, yet people are constantly told not to think about protein, or to worry about excess protein intake instead.
Case in point: the Mayo Clinic article titled "Are you getting enough protein?"[0]
It claims that protein is only a concern for people who are undereating or on weight loss drugs, yet it cites protein recommendations that many people find challenging to meet (1.1g/kg for active people, more if you're over 40 or doing strength or endurance workouts.) To top it off, it's illustrated with a handful of nuts, which are pretty marginal sources of protein. It's bizarrely mixed messaging.
When I did strength sports and would eat ~180g protein a day (which for me was 1.8g/100kg), I ate a lot less meat than you would think, I was carefully tracking all my food for a while and you have to count the whole diet.
In that study they eat > 1.2g protein/kg body weight, but 43% of that is "plant sources", meaning grains, legumes, fruits and vegetables. Like one serving of oatmeal is 6g, things you don't think of as "protein" add up and you have to count them. The athletes in that study are Dutch and 19% of their protein intake came from bread.
But what always happens with protein recommendations is that they say "x grams protein/kg bodyweight" but people hear "protein is meat, you are telling me to eat x grams/kg bodyweight of meat." Very few people ever look closely enough at their diet to develop an intuitive sense for counting macros.
Yes, but the standards aren't based on "the best protein to absorb", they are based on whole diet consumption. Studies like the one I linked to are where the recommendations come from. It is a misunderstanding to read a recommendation for 1.2g/kg (or whatever) as saying that the 1.2g is supposed to all be meat quality protein. It's supposed to be the protein in your total mixed diet.
Your diet contains many sources of protein lower quality than beans (as in the linked study with high level Dutch athletes getting 19% of their protein from bread), you do need to count those. They do add up and if you don't, you end up assuming you need way more protein than you do.
but then how do you know how much protein you should eat ?
if I'm eating bread, pasta and other cereals, I may exceed the 1.2g/kg recommendations but the PDCAAS (Protein Digestibility-Corrected Amino Acid Score) of these would make it in truth closer to 0.6g/kg.
Someone else eating mostly meat would get in total 1.2g/kg protein but also 1.2g/kg when PDCAAS is accounted for.
Maybe it's to simplify the calculation to the average user but it feels misleading, you can't know for sure the proportion of cereals in somebody diet.
Well, that's exactly the problem with focusing too hard on one macro nutrient recommendation out of context of other balanced diet recommendations.
Adding lean meat, dairy, eggs to protein poor diets is good, I love all of those things. Trying to hit a high protein target and understanding this to mean having to eat all or mostly meat is simply over correcting in a different direction.
And meat isn't a perfect PDCAAS! Beef is 0.92 close to soy at 0.91. Milk, eggs, soy protein (isolate), whey are 1. Beans are 0.75.
There's even more nuance, beans are partly lower because they are low in methionine, the essential amino acid that adults needs far less of than any other amino acid and that you don't need more of. In the context of a whole diet, it's not 92% of every gram for beef and 75% of every gram for beans, it doesn't work that way.
Relatively small servings of animal foods add up to a lot of protein, like some other comment was freaking out about needing to eat 4 hamburgers or a 16 oz steak to hit the (very modest) goal of 90g in a day. But something like, 1 egg + 1 can tuna + 1 serving Greek yogurt == 42g, is already at half the goal, much of the rest of it will fill out just fine from a balanced set of other non-empty calorie sources.
All these things are actually rules of thumb that aim to be easy, and less focused on accurate.
A reasonably close rule of thumb can actually be 1g of protein per cm of height.
Also not accurately represented is that your body absorbs less protein per gram consumed the older you get. (I couldnt find a source with an actual ratio, just recommendations for _more_ as you get older).
When listening to folks like Layne Norton, they have said that surprisingly many people who simply increase their protein inadvertently begin to lose weight due to greater satiety per net calorie. (remember, roughly 20% of protein calories are lost in digesting/absorbing/converting the protein)
Correct, and the guideline on the "realfood.gov" site doesn't say it but all the protein g/kg body weight I've seen (mostly relative to weight training or building muscle) are in terms of kg of lean body mass, not total body weight.
A 16oz steak is over 50% protein, or over double your entire daily target. Hamburger count could be right, if you are eating McDonald's burgers or similar. But then you are not following the guidelines, with far too much processed grains and added sugars.
"high scores: braised eye-of-round steak 40.62; broiled t-bone steak (porterhouse) 32.11; grilled lean steak 31.0
"
numbers are grams per hundred grams or wiki also reports 25% as the average, thus your factor of 2 error in weight (400 instead of 200).
People, even meat-eaters, tend to get much of their protein intake from the long tail of non-meat foods they consume. Lots of foods (especially grains and legumes) have a little bit of protein, and that adds up.
Too many calories is the basic explanation for why American's health sucks. Calories available per person has gone up ~32% since the 1960s (we obviously can't measure calories consumed per person, but supply and demand would dictate these excess calories are going somewhere). It is not clear to me that meat specifically is a problem so much as excess consumption leading to obesity, which then causes chronic health problems downstream.
Though of course "meat" is too vague a category to be helpful. Obviously there's a link between beef and heart disease and colorectal cancer. There seems to be no health problems associated with consuming chicken or seafood.
There is a massive amount of research that shows that Vegans are healthier as a population than Vegetarians and definitely meat eaters. Lower risks of nearly every preventable food related illnesses, including cancer. Having this new government health pyramid flies in the face of nearly all current research.
That might have something more to do with almost one in four people in India being a tobacco user[1]. CDC suggests that one in four CVD deaths (in the US) is caused by tobacco use[2].
I don't understand the claim: is it that farming diets are unhealthy, or something else? I'd expect subsistence lifestyles to have higher all-round mortality, but probably not CVD specifically.
> People in India smoked just as much when they weren't living such sedentary lifestyles.
I suspect they also lived shorter lives for the aforementioned all-round mortality reasons.
I think most farming diets in India are closer to subsistence diets, or at least historically have been.
(If you have resources that show otherwise, that would be interesting. But smoking really does seem like the obvious historical outlying factor for heart disease in India, with calorie-dense diets playing catch up as the country has become wealthier.)
A healthy, whole-food plant-based diet is linked to a lower risk of ischemic stroke, with studies showing reduced risk compared to meat-eaters. The conclusion of this paper[1] for example reads that "Lower risk of total stroke was observed by those who adhered to a healthful plant-based diet."
Additionally, researchers at Harvard found that a plant-based diet may lower overall stroke risk by up to 10%. [2]
Hey, do whatever helps you sleep at night. That's what I do. We're all going to the same place - a couple of years here and there won't do much when you're that old anyway.
I'd strongly prefer the government just not try to tell people what to eat, the incentives will always be perverse and nutrition science is anything but science in most cases.
EDIT down-thread to prove my point you'll see people citing studies in favor of and against the new recommendations. The studies are almost always in animals or use self reported data with tiny sample sizes.
Is this true? Specifically, "devised by" vs "influenced by" and "never based on science" meaning there was no, for example, attempt to improve heart disease rates?
In any event, looking at the whole history of food guidance paints a clearer picture of my point. Happy to hear of alternatives though!
Totally junk or skewed to ignore sugar as a contributor? Again I have to immediately doubt your dire accusations because they diverge from what is said in your link as well as what my physician says about cholesterol.
And it's not like the 90s pyramid had sugar at the base.
Yes, largely junk. As I mentioned the literature is full of studies that are nothing but some regressions on top of self reported dietary data. It’s almost all very low quality[1].
food industry has to be policed -- The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is a high school level story featuring the meat packing industry. All around, additives and substitutes are more profitable than raw ingredients.
I'm clearly not advocating against basic safety oversight. It's worth noting that The Jungle was a work of fiction and Sinclair famously fabricated a lot of details wholesale.
> Conclusions: As observed from the food availability data, processed and ultra-processed foods dramatically increased over the past two centuries, especially sugar, white flour, white rice, vegetable oils, and ready-to-eat meals. These changes paralleled the rising incidence of NCDs, while animal fat consumption was inversely correlated.
The biggest food related problem in the US is obesity. Lean meat is very high satiety and really helps with keeping weight in check. Of course a McDonalds meal is the opposite and you eat more than half your day's calories in a few minutes.
So what then do you believe is a healthy diet? Surely eating animal protein on a regular basis is better than having to take a variety of unregulated supplements to stay within a healthy range of essential vitamins and minerals? Animal protein also has the upside of offering a tremendous amount of, well, protein, alongside the necessary vitamins.
Dairy (in certain forms) offers the same benefits.
> Surely eating animal protein on a regular basis is better than having to take a variety of unregulated supplements to stay within a healthy range of essential vitamins and minerals?
By "variety" you mean B12 & omega 3? Or is there something else you think vegans need to supplement that omnivores don't? My kids have varying dietary preferences and personally I haven't found it any more difficult to get high-quality supplements than it is to get high-quality animal proteins.
But what "variety of unregulated supplements" most reminds me of is my chore prepping the cow mineral-vitamin mixes on the farm I worked on as a kid. Most farm animals are given a variety of supplements (by my recollection the cows got A, D, E, iodine, selenium, zinc, various minerals...) that have even less regulation than human supplements. And roughly two thirds of beef cattle in the US receive growth-promoting hormones, though we didn't use those on our farm. And much of the dairy consumed in the US is directly supplemented with vitamin A and D. If you consume animal products in the US you're probably already taking poorly-regulated supplements, they've just been laundered through the body of an animal.
(To be clear I don't agree with the grandparent comment that animal products like dairy, meat, and fish are inherently unhealthy, at least for most people. But neither do I agree that they're inherently superior.)
I think the key point is the relative ratios of meat versus processed carbs. Right now we have government guidance telling people to eat more processed carbs than meat, and that’s backward.
Americans also just need to eat less period, but that’s a separable issue.
>Right now we have government guidance telling people to eat more processed carbs than meat
No we don't. Please show me where.
Are you claiming the old food pyramid is where?
Because Bush jr deprecated that in 2006, and his new, balanced pyramid was again replaced in 2011 by MyPlate, which did not tell you to eat more processed carbs, and was not even a pyramid.
Why do so many of you people think that something that was very clearly replaced twice is still somehow in effect? How much of the recent history of the US are you guys missing? Did you lose your memory or something?
Okay, I amend my statement to say “we raised an entire generation to think you should eat multiple times as much carbs as protein.”
I learned the 1992 food pyramid in school. I was in college by the time they changed it, and I have no idea what the current one says. When the government undertakes a mass campaign to socialize children into a particular idea that’s what happens.
My wife is vegetarian, mostly vegan because she's allergic to dairy.
I really enjoyed "keeping up" with her when we were dating, because I was really tired of eating the same things all the time. There's really a lot of delicious plant proteins if you take the time to look.
(That being said, our kids like meat. We just don't eat it all the time.)
This is something I have been thinking about and researching for awhile, because there is so very much confusing language out there.
Your quote says over the last century, so I'm going to use roughly 1920 as the baseline. It also refers to a per capita increase of meat consumption by 100 pounds, or about 45.4 kilograms (to make the math easier). This is roughly an increase of 124g of meat per person per day (or about 3oz if that makes more sense to you).
This equates to a daily increase in per-capita protein intake by 25-30g (depending on which meat and how lean it is).
In 1920, the average American adult male was about 140 pounds, and ate about 100g of protein per day, which works out to roughly 0.71 grams per pound of body weight (or about 1.6 grams per kilogram).
In 2025, one century later, the average American adult male is 200 pounds, and if he eats the same ratio of weight to protein, you would expect that he would eat around 140g of protein per day, which is slightly higher than the increase in per-capita meat consumption over the same time.
However, if you look at actual statistics of what people are eating in protein, you'll see that the average American adult male is actually eating about 97g of protein per day, or about 0.49 grams per pound (1.1 grams per kg), which is much less than we ate a century ago, which means that that the increase in meat consumption doesn't match change in protein, so is offset by either less non-meat protein, meat with lower protein content (e.g. more fat), or both.
There was some discussion lower in the thread about bodybuilders vs normal people, and about basing your calculations on lean body weight vs full bodyweight. Lean body weight calculations are often used for bodybuilders, but those numbers are elevated (typically 1 gram of protein per pound of lean body weight). For someone who is sedentary to lightly active (e.g. daily walks), the calculation is based on full body weight, not lean body weight, and is about 0.7 gram per pound (or 1.5 grams per kilogram), which matches this recommendation exactly.
Hitting these targets has been shown to greatly increase satiation, reduce appetite, but it does not make you lose weight, and it is not permanent (reducing your protein intake removes the effect, which makes sense). However, long term studies show that people who increase their protein intake to these levels and lose weight (through calorie reduction or fasting) keep that weight off.
Finally, from what I've been able to cobble together, high protein intakes combined with high fat and high sugar intakes does not have the same effect as a diet that matches the recommendations here (ie. it's not just about higher protein intake, it's about percentage of calories from protein, which should be around 20-25%... 200 pound sedentary to lightly active adult male, 140g of protein, or 560 calories, in a total diet of 2250-2800 calories, depending on activity level)
USA is actually healthier then in 1909. Life expectancy was going up the whole time. A whole bunch of malnutritiom related issues and diseases just disappeared.
You need to go to much more recent times to get worsening results/predictions.
I wasn't making a claim about the US being either healthier or unhealthier as a whole; I was only observing that annual per capita meat consumption does not trivially track with the benefits claimed on the site. It might, but the evidence is not presented.
> I was only observing that annual per capita meat consumption does not trivially track with the benefits claimed on the site
There was no such observation, just claim going contra observed data. The period you picked does correlate meat consumption going up with health getting better.
You said that meat consumption went up for last century. Then you claimed that "our already positive trend in meat consumption isn't yielding positive outcomes" - except that majority of that period did yielded positive outcomes.
"Last century" is a big piece of that, surely. As recently as 50 years ago, obesity rates were quite low (and risk of hunger among the poor was, you know, more real than it is today).
There is a lot of research that shows the type of calorie you consume determines to some extent the next calorie you want to consume. You are more likely to be "sated" (i.e. not want to eat more calories), if you eat protein than you are ultra-processed carbohydrates, low calorie soda will leave your body yearning sugar, and so on.
When you couple this with the motivations of industrial food companies (some of whom are now owned by tobacco companies), and the research they do into the neuroscience effects of flavour, texture, even packaging of food, you'll start to spot that a push to "Real Food", and for that food to be less processed and more inclined towards protein, is more likely to result in overall calorie reduction.
One of the things that isn't cutting through on this program is saying "eat protein" is assumed to mean "eat meat", which some assume means you can eat burgers. Nope. Healthy protein is not red meat that has been fried - that's going to take a bit more education, I expect.
I think its dangerous to engage with this website as an earnest attempt to make people healthier as individuals or as a population and not a metastasis of woo-fueld ignorance of data and trends like you're talking about whos goal is ultimately just to sell shit to desperate people.
Speaking from personal experience, this is consistent with multiple doctors over the years recommending high-protein, low carb diets. (Clarification: low does not mean no carb.)
I don't understand people freaking out over this - outside of a purely political reflex - hell hath no fury like taking away nerds' Mountain Dew and Flamin' Hot Cheetos.
Nor do I understand the negative reactions to new restrictions on SNAP - candy and sugary drinks are no longer eligible.
> I don't understand people freaking out over this
Personally I'm not a fan of any diet that recommends high meat consumption and I say that as someone who eats everything.
Cattle outweighs the total livestock on this planet by a 10 to 1 factor.
While governments pretend to do stuff for the environment, they seem to always ignore the extreme cost on the environment and pollution caused by cattle. Even focusing on CO2 emissions by industry avoids the elephant of the room of the insane levels of methane produced by cows, a gas that's 200 times more harmful.
There is little evidence that a meat heavy diet is good for people, but there's plenty of evidence of the contrary.
So, to be honest, while I don't freak out and I'm all for freedom, there has to be also some kind of consciousness into how do we use the resources on this planet, and diet is by far more impactful than the transport of choice.
The livestock industry is an ecological disaster of unimaginable proportions. 50% of all habitable land is used for agriculture. Of that land, 83% is used for livestock, despite the fact that it only provides 18% of the calories consumed worldwide.
> While governments pretend to do stuff for the environment, they seem to always ignore the extreme cost on the environment and pollution caused by cattle.
While governments and politicians generally like to portray themselves as being driven by morals, they are actually driven almost entirely by economic interests.
> So, to be honest, while I don't freak out and I'm all for freedom, [...]
Well, I would like the freedom to live on a planet with an intact ecosystem. I also think that animals would like the freedom to live a life free from unnecessary exploitation.
> [...] and diet is by far more impactful than the transport of choice.
Both are high-impact areas, but changing your diet is much easier than changing your choice of transport - in some countries. Transport emissions account for about 25% of all emissions, 60% of which are caused by individuals' use of cars.
And after all of this, we haven't even touched on what fishing is doing to our oceans.
It’s maybe unpopular, but people should feel bad about it, especially they should feel shame. I don’t feel it either, who knows this for decades, and even tried a few times. But I should. There is exactly zero pressure regarding this.
Based on how people react to me simply being a vegetarian in their presence, without me commenting on what either of us are eating, people do feel shame. It's just that the shame is outweighed by the pleasure of eating whatever.
Why don't you think people should feel bad about it? My moral system generally dictates that I don't economically support immoral behavior, or at least seek alternatives where practical.
Don't expect a carbon tax to save us, a carbon tax is not coming.
Because it is not even a remote exaggeration to say that in order to truly make the morally "correct" choices everyday, you would need to not participate in any part of society.
Telling people to feel bad about eating animal protein but to keep driving their cars that destroy the environment, shopping at stores that underpay their employees, purchasing items that are made with diminishing resources in countries that pay close to nothing to their labor force is picking an arbitrary battle in a war of existence.
Promoting making better choices will always be more effective than asking people to feel guilty over existing at all.
Source your food locally if you can, cook and eat only what you need, etc.
It's a natural response to feel bad about your behavior not aligning with your values.
So much so that we prefer to not think about it to prop up cognitive dissonance.
I think "wanting people to feel bad" is more an urge that people at least acknowledge the dissonance. Many people don't even get that far because it's so uncomfortable.
Because people would just feel bad about it and keep doing it. I don't care about people feeling bad about immoral behavior, I care about them not doing it in the first place.
Yeah, the meat industry has successfully tied meat consumption to the American ideal of masculinity and there is an endless supply of insecure men that buy into the world of bro-science.
The point is to emphasize that there's more cows on this planet using more resources than all of the other animals combined (excluding fish and water mammals).
You could add all the squirrels, elephants, lions, cats, birds, all of those, and you're not even at a fraction of mass of the cows we grow.
> Nor do I understand the negative reactions to new restrictions on SNAP - candy and sugary drinks are no longer eligible
The issue is that "Ultra-Processed" does not mean "candy and sugary drinks" and even "sugary drinks" is overly broad. Can SNAP pay for sugar-free Coke but not classic coke? What about Gatorade?
SNAP already had reasonable restrictions. This very much feels like a "middle management style" project. Dedicating resources to a nebulously defined BIG project regardless of whether or not it actually improves outcomes.
Sugar free coke is not as bad as sugar-ful Coke but it's still bad. Many of the cheap sweeteners have been linked to cancer. They still fuck with the brain and hormones and make you want salty foods and/or more sweet tasting things.
So yea, how about drinking water as your primary source of hydration?
If you are poor, the last thing you need is Diabetes, Cancer, Hypertension, Cardiovascular disease, etc.
The problem also is there is a huge amount of fraud with SNAP with people claiming benefits for multiple people and then reselling their SNAP cards to just make cash. The people buying the endless cases of Mountain Dew often have just bought a 50% discounted SNAP card off some other person who isn't starving at all.
You're going to get very bored just drinking water all day every day. Why can I buy coffee to make my water more interesting? Why can I buy Kool-Aid and pour 12 tablespoons into a glass, but I can't buy a Coke? What about a diabetic who is out and needs a quick sugar fix?
Might as well tell people they also just need to eat plain rice for every meal too.
I get there is some fraud on SNAP. I know people on SNAP. Most of them use every single cent on decent food. I've seen fraud, though. In Chicago I would place a bet that most non-chain convenience stores will sell you cigarettes on SNAP. Some of them absolutely sell weed on SNAP.
The negative reactions to the new SNAP restrictions are because much of it make no sense. In the states that have implemented there has been mass confusion at many stores as people can't figure out what is eligible and what is not.
For example at one store there was confusion as to why a ready to eat cup of cut fruit packaged with a plastic spoon from the store's deli department was ineligible, but a slice of cake packaged with a plastic fork from the store's bakery was eligible. Apparently the cake being made with flour makes it OK, regardless of how much sugar is in the cake and the icing.
When Michelle Obama pushed for better school lunches she was excoriated for trying to get healthier foods into the hands of children. Glenn Beck's response was "Get your damn hands off my fries, lady. If I want to be a fat, fat, fatty and shovel French fries all day long, that is my choice!". Seems partisan spite cuts both ways.
I'm glad to see this announcement and despite the leadership in Washington right now I don't think these adjustment will be seen as too controversial by the American public. The recommendations are based on a lot of good nutritional science that's been out there for years, but the buck seems to stop at the conversation around fat.
They went to great lengths to remove the debate around good fat vs bad fat from this discussion. Even reading the report, emphasis is put on the discussion of why we use so many pressed oils in the food chain, but not why we phased lard and shortening out of the American diet.
"Eat real butter" is ostensibly a recommendation presented at the bottom of the webpage, but butter is not a healthy fat. Same with some people's obsession with frying in beef tallow, but the report doesn't want to dig into this distinction for obvious self interested reasons. They even recommend:
> When cooking with or adding fats to meals, prioritize oils with essential fatty
acids, such as olive oil. Other options can include butter or beef tallow.
Which is a good recommendation. But no, you don't want to replace olive oil with butter or beef tallow. There's a lot of good nutrition science to back this up, but the report would prefer to not go there. Maybe "eat some butter" is appropriate, but unless the FDA wants to have an honest conversation around HDL and LDL cholesterol and saturated fats, I don't see this inverted pyramid doing too much good for overall population health (besides raising awareness)
Partisan spite does cut both ways and should be seen as such and ignored on either side.
Regarding fat I think "eat real whole unprocessed food" is a simple way to cover it. These guideliness recommend using less added fat including avoiding deep frying, and if one must use fat to use a minimally processed (i.e. pressed or rendered) form like olive oil or coconut oil or butter or animal fat. Though they failed to mention the distinction between refined and unrefined olive oil - today much of it is refined i.e. highly processed.
One of the best litmus tests for Democrat or Republican I have found is "Should people on food stamps be able to buy mountain dew / candy / etc with them?", very low false positive rate in either direction.
But regardless I have it on very good authority that with the BBB some within the Republican party wanted to limit EBT to only be able to purchase healthy food. No soda, no candy, no chips, etc. A couple calls from Coke, Pepsi, etc lobbyists shot that down.
People should be able to get cash transfers to buy goods on the general market. There shouldn't be food stamps.
The success of SNAP comes despite its inherent inefficiency, friction, and the indignity of its limitations. We structure the program the way we do in order to mollify voters who twitch at the idea of the poor ever enjoying anything.
Inequality isn't just about healthcare costs, biological metrics, etc. It is also deeply corrosive socially and psychologically, and this side of things is systemically underappreciated in policy circles.
To be sure, our food and diets are bad. Americans broadly should eat healthier. But are society's interests really better served by insisting that a poor child not be allowed to have a cake and blow out the candles on his birthday, the way all of his friends do?
In California you can use food stamps for fast food.
I haven't been there in a while so it might be different now.
Let's think about it.
Your homeless or in an unstable living situation. You don't have access to a kitchen, where are you going to make a home cooked meal.
How are you going to prepare raw chicken without a stove. Some homeless encampments do have people trying to cook, which sounds neat until a fire starts.
Let someone down on there luck buy a sandwich with SNAP. Maybe a shake too. Keeps the fastfood franchise in business, keeps people employed there.
The money is going to flow right into the local economy. I'd rather my tax dollars stay here than funding military bases all over planet earth.
I agree with you though. Just give people money. I feel like a UBI is the way to go. A single Flat tax rate for everyone. Everyone gets 1000$ a month( just off the top of my head, could be higher or lower).
The bizzaro welfare cliff...
If you and your partner have kids it can be smart to not get married and have the kids live with whoever makes less.
They get free healthcare with the less affluent parent and you just hope you don't get sick.
It seems unnecessarily reductive to insist that we must choose between endlessly subsidizing Mountain Dew and Twinkies or that poor children should never be allowed to have cake.
Honestly when it comes to SNAP there's no good answer that achieves all of the reasonable policy goals ('make sure the kids have something to eat', and 'avoid wasting benefit money on crap')
You can replace it with cash aid, and there's a good chance a good chunk of recipients will spend most of it on drugs, lottery tickets, or alcohol while the kids go hungry.
On the other hand, you can have the way it is now, where the same kind of person who would do the above, sells $200 worth of SNAP benefits to whatever corrupt bodega owner in exchange for $100 to spend on drugs, lottery tickets, or alcohol while the kids go hungry.
In both situations the government is spending $200 to buy the poor harmful vices. We're just choosing between fraudster shop owners getting a cut, or the addict being able to buy twice as much malt liquor.
And in case it isn't clear, I don't think the majority of SNAP recipients sell their benefits or don't feed their kids. But the responsible group, well, it makes little difference to them whether they have EBT or cash aid as they're going to buy food anyway.
> We're just choosing between fraudster shop owners getting a cut, or the addict being able to buy twice as much malt liquor.
I don't agree with these zero friction in a vacuum takes. Difficulty in access does shape choices, a lot in fact.
If you make it easier for people to use handouts to gamble or do drugs or whatever then more people will do it and ones doing it will do more of it. This isn't even a take its the null hypothesis.
The null hypothesis could just as easily be if they get a 1:1 dollar exchange rate versus a 1:2 rate on their food stamps, they can afford to buy drugs AND food instead of just drugs. Guess which one they buy if they can only buy one? Guess what they are incentivized to do if they have less cash than they need on hand to do both? I'll give you a hint, it rhymes with teal.
> A couple calls from Coke, Pepsi, etc lobbyists shot that down.
Fucking hell, if this is true, I don't know how those people sleep at night. Really, It's a failure if my imagination, but I don't imagine how people like this function. I'm sure I've done my share of indirect harm in this world, one way or the other, but being so on the nose about it would make me absolutely nauseous.
The truth is that lobbyists have a ton of cards to play, including that if such a ban were to go through, there would be a lot less demand for High Fructose Corn Syrup, which might sound wonderful, except that HFCS is a byproduct of corn, which is a major export of some very competitive swing states.
You fuck with that, your party gets trounced in the next election.
Half of the purpose of SNAP is to be yet more subsidy to American megafarms. That was literally how it was done by FDR, and why it is administered by the department of Agriculture. It intentionally drives food production that wouldn't necessarily be profitable on its own because most first world countries, including the US, found that letting Capitalism run free on your food supply would result in booms, busts, and cyclic famine.
Soaking up grain and corn syrup supplies is intentional. Ethanol in our gas has a similar purpose.
However, the primary reason you should not care about SNAP recipients spending money on soda or chips or junk is because it's usually a good price/calorie ratio, so for the half a percent of Americans that literally don't get enough to eat, it can be sustaining, if not healthy, but for the rest, the idea that people shouldn't be able to have a small luxury because it's socialized is just too much.
Taking candy from children is probably just not worth the squeeze. The entire federal SNAP program is ~$80 billion.
Lookup WIC. It is a very restricted program of food assistance, and spends immense effort and money of "only healthy" or "no junk" and parental education and supporting nutrition, and it really pays off, but it does that by relying on ENORMOUS free labor from parents and stores. A WIC checkout takes significantly longer than average, is more error prone, and is miserable for all involved, for like $30 of bread and cheese.
Very informative post, and for background, I am not an us citizen. I have no issue with the idea of small luxury because it's socialized, but I do have the impression that obesity is a huge issue in the US and these kind of consumption patterns cause reinforcement and lead to worse outcomes. I have nothing against cheap food and cheap calories(actually I think they are super useful) but I do think healthier people are an aim we, as a species, should target.
> If they so choose to dissolve their teeth and decimate their guy bacteria, who am I to intervene?
In this case, I'm the American taxpayer who is paying for all of this food, and, perhaps more importantly, paying for all of the medical treatment they receive because of the consequences of these choices.
When your consumption is being paid for by other people, it's perfectly reasonable for those people to put limits on your choices, especially when they're footing the bill for the consequences of any bad choices you make too. We're a wealthy country and shouldn't let people starve, but you don't need ice cream or Coke or Pringles not to starve.
I'll bite. I think there is a difference between "should they" and "should they be able to."
Most liberals I know think they shouldn't but that its stupid to police this aspect of people's behavior if they are on EBT. Most liberals might even feel more comfortable regulating everyone's behavior by taxing unhealthy foods than they would just bothering poor people with it.
EBT is already money with strings attached - you can only spend it on food. I don't see narrowing the definition of "food" here to exclude soda to be a huge problem.
I don't really see the point, as a practical matter. Money being the fungible thing that it is, the only way this policy actually restricts anything is if the only money SNAP recipients ever spend on food is their SNAP benefit.
It feels much more like spite politics: We can tell these people whose morals are so bad that they need our money to survive that they cannot spend it on what we think of as junk food. That is a luxury only us hard working folk are permitted. When you are poor, you cannot suffer alone, you need to know that we are making sure you feel extra pain. Please be motivated to be better.
Since it has no calories, it's not "food" by even a very loose definition.
As someone who lives in a neighborhood where most tapwater is still delivered by lead service lines, I'm sympathetic to the argument that it provides hydration. I'd prefer that my tax dollars went to solving that problem more directly, however.
I think it could be argued either way. There's plenty of non-food necessities (toilet paper, feminine hygiene products, etc.) that aren't covered by SNAP.
If we want healthy food we have to regulate the food-makers. Everything else is skirting the edges of the problem. Taxes, EBT restrictions, none of that will make a dent.
Taxes like that seem all but required if you want to have a chance at a functioning single payer system. 0 chance single-payer will works with so much freedom to destroy yourself then make everyone pay for it.
I don't see why this would be the case - it's not like the private system in the US today has different premiums based on how much junk food you eat (the closest to that I've seen is higher premiums for tobacco users).
In my experience the reason Republicans are so interested in what people can buy with food stamps is that they want very much to punish people who are on food stamps. If they truly cared about the health of needy Americans there are a lot of other things they could do, or even a lot of things they could stop doing like making it more difficult to access health care, quackifying vaccine recommendations, holding press conferences in which they say nobody should take Tylenol under any circumstances, making dubious assertions about AIDS; the list goes on and on.
What if we just don't want to subsidize giving people lifelong obesity and metabolic disorders? Why does that necessarily imply we have to agree with you on other issues? Do we need to make it tribal and ascribe ulterior motives?
> giving people lifelong obesity and metabolic disorders
Is that a given? People can drink soda without getting fat. And plenty of people get quite large without ever drinking soda. This seems more personal, like intentionally causing suffering as a moral imperative.
Why should they not, what is with this parental-ism? Should Social Security recipients be able to buy candy? Should my employer get to choose what food I can purchase?
Food stamps are an inherently paternalistic program. The whole point is to ensure people get enough to eat, even when they can't or won't provide for themselves. Same with other voucher or in-kind welfare programs in housing, healthcare, education, etc.
A poor kid on food stamps should be able to get a birthday cake on their birthday. Anyone that believes otherwise definitely should never have kids or work with kids.
For exceptional items, can't the parent pay for them from non-SNAP money? For instance from the child tax credits they also get? SNAP's stated purpose is nutrition, not making birthdays fun.
Oh good, you have demonstrated how money is somewhat fungible and therefore any moralizing about what welfare is spent on is a little odd
>SNAP's stated purpose is nutrition
SNAPS purpose is dual, and it was always also about ensuring american farmers had more demand, including for corn syrup. Horrifically, EBT being spent on soda is intentional.
If that bothers you, we can reduce corn subsidies without taking candy from literal children, or keeping poor parents from buying chips.
Who cares? It's $5.00 to buy a box of cake mix and a can of frosting. Let poor people have fun sometimes instead of trying to use the welfare as a leash to harry them constantly about their choices.
If they want total freedom, they don't have to spend food stamps. They can always provide for themselves.
You are right, a single box of cake mix once a year is fine. But between banning processed foods, or allowing everything, the former is far closer to the "just cake once a year" scenario. Allowing unlimited spend on junk food will in most cases lead to worse outcomes.
I go on HN to read thoughtful non-partisan commentary but the general mood seems to be "everything is bad" in certain threads even if that contradicts a previous popular HN consensus.
Pizza as a vegetable (because of tomato sauce) was California under Reagan. Michelle Obama said to eat healthy and exercise more, though "eat healthy" still used the MyPlate guidelines.
> Nor do I understand the negative reactions to new restrictions on SNAP - candy and sugary drinks are no longer eligible.
I can think of one issue here. Ultra-processed foods, candy, and sugary drinks are cheap and shelf-stable. They're cheap because they're subsidized. Fruits and vegetables are more expensive, and they don't last very long. So a person on a very limited SNAP budget will get less food under the new restrictions.
The answer, of course, is to make it so that fresh produce and other healthy options are cheaper than the junk food. I have a hard time seeing that happening, given how susceptible the administration is to being "lobbied".
The actual issue is that "Ultra-Processed" is EXTREMELY broad and vague.
For example, hot dogs are ultra-processed. Obviously hot dogs are not the healthiest food but also obviously "franks and beans" is a pretty good meal for a tight budget and is something you should be able to get with SNAP.
Franks and beans are not the best meal on the cheap. Sounds more expensive than cooking fresh and you're missing out on better nutrition.
For the most bang for your buck you want to be eating less expensive real protein like chicken and pork and filling up on salads. Limit carb intake from beans and other starches. Prefer fruit for carbs because it has fiber and vitamins you can't get anywhere else.
You are preposterously out-of-touch with reality here. "Filling up on salads" is healthy but it is FAR from the most "bang for your buck". And are seriously trying to say that beans aren't a good source of fiber and vitamins?
Sure you shouldn't eat hot dogs and baked beans three meals a day every day but you are absolutely out of your mind if you think cheap sausage and canned beans are bad to have in the house when you are struggling.
I am reading what you wrote and disputing it but you don't seem to want to hear it.
I am saying that denying the sale of all "ULTRA PROCESSED" foods to people receiving food assistance is NOT helpful because deciding what counts as "ultra-processed" is too messy and imprecise.
You are trying to split hairs over the most cost-effective struggle meals.
I can indulge you.
---
Perdue Young Whole Chicken Fresh (~5lb) = $12.49
Oscar Mayer Original Uncured Turkey Chicken & Pork Wieners (10 count) $4.49 +
3x Bush's Best Original Baked Beans (16 oz.) $7.47 ($2.49 ea.) = 11.96 total
You eat half a can of beans and one hot dog per meal. That's six meals and four extra hot dogs you can do whatever else you want with.
You can definitely get six meals out of a whole chicken but it's going to be a lot more work plus the additional 50c cost (and that's ignoring the value of the four extra hot dogs). 1 hot dog + 8oz of beans is going to be a fairly similar portion to 1/6th the recoverable meat from a 5lb bird.
It should obviously go without saying but, since you seem to be a stickler, I should point out that there is nothing stopping you from eating chicken one week then frank & beans the next. Variety is the biggest part of a healthy diet.
Your body doesn't care about the weight of the food nor the quantity of items in the package.
You eat calories and process nutrients. You can make a lot more meals and a wider variety of recipes with a whole chicken than a pack of hot dogs.
Anyone who shops like you described is not being efficient with their money as long as they have their own kitchen. Poverty is a lot of possible scenarios. I'm not saying they're dumb or anything.
Nutrition is hard to think about when tempted by the modern convenient grocery store with limited money. Unit price has a way of messing with your head. I also get the practicality of having packaged and shelf stable food when you lack access to a freezer and can't stay somewhere for too long. It is what it is.
"What meals can I make with a given amount of money?" is a reasonable way to shop.
You said:
> Franks and beans are not the best meal on the cheap. Sounds more expensive than cooking fresh and you're missing out on better nutrition.
> For the most bang for your buck you want to be eating less expensive real protein like chicken and pork and filling up on salads.
I gave you math on how you can take the money you would have spent on chicken and get essentially the same "bang for your buck" by spending it instead on canned beans and cheap sausage for the protein portion of your meals.
It is completely reasonable to allow people who receive money for food assistance to buy hot dogs.
It is completely unreasonable to disallow people who receive money for food assistance from purchasing anything "Ultra Processed" because "Ultra Processed" is a category too broad and loose to determine whether or not a given food item is "healthy".
Beans are legitimately one of the most balanced foods out there. Yes, they have carbs (but they're more complex than the simple sugars in fruit), they also have a lot of fiber, protein and several key micro-nutrients. Not to mention, most people on SNAP have kids and good luck getting them to eat salads.
I think you answered your own question with the last sentence. Have cattle ranchers, chicken farmers, vegetable and fruit farmers lobby for same or higher subsidies than grains.
> a person on a very limited SNAP budget will get less food under the new restrictions ... make it so that fresh produce and other healthy options are cheaper than the junk food
I'm confused by these statements. How are you deciding to measure the quantity of "food"? If you see food as a means to deliver nutrients, fresh produce is already far cheaper than junk food.
From the perspective of your body, you can sustain yourself much better on a smaller amount of nutrient dense calories than a larger amount of empty ones. Obesity is not merely an overconsumption of calories or a measure of food or body mass.
Restrictions on SNAP are tricky business. You can't ask someone on SNAP to spend time preparing food. Prepared meals are expensive, often not accessible, and sometimes difficult to prepare for people with certain disabilities. It might seem strange, but I have known people, very poor people, who rely on "foods in bar and drink form" out of necessity. I have known poor people for whom eating fruit is physically challenging.
SNAP changes like this may be better on a population health level, to be sure. On this I have no evidence. But each restriction placed on food for people living in destitution may mean some people go hungry. (And this excludes issues of caloric density.) I would like to see better data, but sadly, there is none.
+1 – it's all well and good for me to buy just some vegetables this week, because I have a pantry full of hundreds of dollars worth of basics, spices, a herb garden, bulk (more expensive) rice/pasta, etc. I also have a single 9-5 job so can spend an hour each day cooking.
But if I had an empty kitchen, lacked the funds to invest in bulk purchases, and had 30 minutes to cook and eat, I'd be eating very differently.
As others have pointed out, that's not what the restriction seems to be limited to. The distinction isn't based on sugar content but the amount of "processing", which rules out quite a lot of things beyond just candy and soda.
Nutrition science has come up with acceptable macronutrient distribution ranges (AMDR). The recommendation for adults is 45-65% of total calories from carbohydrates, 20-35% from fat, and 10-35% from protein. That is definitely not low carb.
The sources of those macronutrients also matter. The ideal range for saturated fat is 5-10% of total calories. Meat consumption, especially red meat, is associated with higher risk of colorectal cancer. Dairy consumption is associated with higher risk of prostate cancer.
I haven't read the new guidelines in detail but if they're recommending red meat and whole milk as primary foods, then they are not consistent with the research on cancer and cardiovascular disease risk and I doubt that people following them would meet the AMDRs or ideal saturated fat intake.
To be fair, those macronutrient guidelines were established not because of any special properties of those macros (give or take the nitrogen load from protein) but because when applied as a population-level intervention they encourage sufficient fiber, magnesium, potassium, etc. You can have 50% of your calories be from fats and still live a long, healthy life, and you can do so as a population (see, e.g. Crete and some other Mediterranean sub-regions in the early/mid-1900s). You can have a much higher protein intake and have beneficial outcomes too.
Your point about the sources mattering isn't tangential; it's the entire point. The reason the AMDR exists is to encourage good sources. A diet of 65% white sugar and 25% butter isn't exactly what it had in mind though, and it's those sources you want to scrutinize more heavily.
Even for red meat though, when you control for cohort effects, income, and whatnot, and examine just plain red meat without added nitrites or anything, the effect size and study power diminishes to almost nothing. It's probably real, but it's not something I'm especially concerned about (I still don't eat much red meat, but that's for unrelated reasons).
To put the issue to scale, if you take the 18% increased risk in colorectal cancer from red meats as gospel (ignoring my assertions that it's more important to avoid hot dogs than lean steaks), or, hell, let's double that to 36%, your increased risk of death from the intervention of adding a significant portion of red meat to your diet is only half as impactful as the intervention of adding driving to your daily activities.
The new guidelines seem to be better than just recommending more steaks anyway. They're not perfect, but I've seen worse health advice.
Well, there are two factors that go into the recommendations. As you mentioned, one is adequate micronutrients. The other is chronic disease risk reduction. The 5-10% of total calories from saturated fat recommendation falls into the latter category. The risk of meat and dairy is not just cancer, but saturated fat.
I would agree that with proper knowledge and planning, it's possible to reduce carbs and increase protein/unsaturated fats while maintaining adequate fiber and micronutrients. But in practice, I think it's much more common to see people taking low-carb diet recommendations as a license to eat a pound or more of meat per day, drink gallons of milk per week, and completely ignore fiber intake, which is objectively not healthy.
mostly because of the destruction of American science, public health and public safety the admin pushed through in order to publish this set of guidelines, instead of just hiring a professionally trained RD to write it up.
Didn’t those professionals give us the original food pyramid that told us to stuff our faces with bread? Weren’t they the same people that told us not to eat eggs because of cholesterol? And tell us to limit our fish consumption?
Maybe different areas of expertise aren’t equally valid, and even good experts often can’t see the forest for the trees in terms of developing actionable advice.
Coal burning and incidental industrial releases drastically increased the amount of mercury in surface waters over the past century. The released mercury gets transformed by bacteria into organomercury compounds which are lipophilic and concentrate up the food chain, meaning that predator fish like tuna and swordfish can contain orders of magnitude more mercury than the water they live in.
There are plenty of fish with much lower mercury levels (like salmon, trout, and sardines):
Your first link recommends limiting fish for children to 2 servings per week, even from the “best choices” list. By contrast it recommends kids 1-5 have two servings a day of other meat and poultry: https://www.parkchildcare.ie/food-pyramid-for-1-5-year-old-c...
Thats tantamount to a recommendation that fish should comprise a minority of your protein, which is backwards. It’s almost certainly healthier overall for fish to be your primary protein source and to eat red meat, chicken, and pork sparingly. How many servings a week of fish do you think Japanese kids eat?
This is incorrect reasoning. Science is advancing. It is like saying we should not listen to physicists because "Didn't those physicists gave us the original heliocentric system?"
Who was lobbied? The lobbyists can’t publish things in the Federal Register. How it works is they try to influence the experts at the agencies to support their position. That’s what lobbying is. It’s all laundered through experts both in the private sector and the government.
>How it works is they try to influence the experts at the agencies to support their position
The real winning move if you can afford it to pay for a bunch of academic labs who won't at the margin publish stuff that's bad for their sugardaddy. This way the lawmakers, the bureaucrats and the public discourse is all built upon numbers and information that is favorable to you. So then when those officials you bought make the "right" decisions they can do so in comfort knowing that their decisions are backed by the numbers.
> The real winning move if you can afford it to pay for a bunch of academic labs who won't at the margin publish stuff that's bad for their sugardaddy.
"The professionals" produced 2.5-3 laughably bad food pyramids depending on how you count. Of all the things this administration has done to "run around" the system on this or that issue, this is not gonna be one I'm gonna get pissed off about.
Is the department of agriculture not "the professionals"?
And even if they weren't not a day goes by that government doesn't do things based on research/influence/numbers from academia that was produced with funding from a) the government b) the industry. So it's not like anything other option for deriving a food pyramid is free of questionable influence either.
Are you talking about "professionally trained nutritionists"?
Those people are worse than Astrologers.
At least astrologers stick to their fantasy, while, since I remember being old enough to count, I already lost track of how many times they've told us that "eggs are bad" and then "eggs are good" again, and then bad, and good, and... I've lost track.
Then they told us to eat cereal at breakfast, and that bread and potatoes are the basis of a good diet, then that fat is the killer and then that we should replace butter with plant based alternatives and the list goes on.
Nutritionists aren't scientists. They aren't even good at basic logic and coherence. So, no, I don't want them in charge of dictating policies.
That sounds more like the fad Atkin's weight loss diet that said you could eat unlimited meat/fat/protein, but no carbs.
This new JFK Jr diet has something in common with the Paleo "cave man" diet, which at least makes some sense in the argument ("this is what our bodies have evolved to eat") if not the specifics. I'm not sure where the emphasis on milk/cheese and eggs comes from since this all modern, not hunter-gatherer, and largely unhealthy, and putting red-meat at the top (more cholesterol, together with the eggs), and whole grain at the bottom makes zero sense - a recipe for heart attacks and colon cancer.
Eggs are very healthy. There's a lot of nutrients that are hard to get from other sources that eggs have in abundance. And it makes sense in just a common-sense sort of way -- if you're a chicken you want to surround your offspring with the best possible food you can as they grow.
With regards to dairy, it's more about a person's individual reaction to it. It's a similar argument with nutrient density (since milk is intended for growing offspring, obviously it's going to be very nutrient dense). The downside is potential inflammation or not having the enzymes to process it.
I would definitely not lump eggs and dairy as "bad" in any way though.
Also, the "cholesterol" thing is a very bad thing to focus on. Cholesterol is not bad! You need cholesterol. (What do you think cell membranes are partially composed of?
Whole grains are not as good as you think. Often, they're made from strains that are optimized for growing and robustness not nutrition. Also, unless you're exercising a lot you really don't need much in the way of carbs.
> Also, the "cholesterol" thing is a very bad thing to focus on. Cholesterol is not bad! You need cholesterol. (What do you think cell membranes are partially composed of?
There is also not a very strong connection between dietary cholesterol and serum levels, anyway.
There's certainly a difference between modern and ancient grain varieties, but OTOH whole grain bread is basically what fed at least the western world for the last 2000 years - bread was the center of the roman diet and also of the medieval diet, which seems more than long enough (~100 generations - evolution is fast) for this to be the natural "our bodies evolved for this" diet that we should be targeting!
As far as eggs and dairy go, sure they are healthy for who is meant to be consuming them - baby chickens and baby mammals, but that doesn't mean they are good for us in excess.
There have been, and continue to be, so may flip flops in dietary recommendations and what is good/bad for you, that it seems common sense is a better approach. All things in moderation, and indeed look to what our relatively recent ancestors have been eating to get an idea of what our bodies are evolved to eat - whole foods and not processed ones and chemical additives.
I don't think 2,000 years is enough, but am not an expert. The main thing that grains and bread did was make it a lot easier for more people to get through lean times without starving. It also allowed people to specialize: not everyone needed to be a hunter/gatherer.
20,000 years maybe yes. But we have not been agricultural for that long. And that's why grain-based food still is not something we're well adapted to.
Ancient grains are great! But frankly, you're probably not going to be finding Einkhorn grains in you're grocery store. It's not just the way whole grains are processed, it's also about the plants they grow from. Also, the way ancient grains are processed is not particularly profitable (they need to sit and ferment, for instance, and the grain itself is a lot lower yield).
If you want to eat ancient grains I'd say go for it, but when I talk about whole grains I talk about what you're going to find in an average grocery store, and even what you find at a place like Whole Foods is pretty bad.
I highly suspect that nobody other than body builders are eating eggs in excess (if that's even possible -- what bad nutrients are in eggs?). Eggs are kind of a pain in the ass to cook (other than hard boiling), and most processing is about convenience.. In any case, things like choline are hard to get from other sources, and I think it's not that wild to assume our ancestors loved to raid birds nests for nutrient dense eggs.
Agreed on a lot of flip flops in dietary recommendations, but that definitely doesn't mean that the classic food pyramid was anywhere close to correct.
If you're looking for an excellent supplier of einkhorn, I'd suggest Bluebird Grain Farms. (They're local to me, so I'm a bit biased of course. But they are a great group, and their flours and grains are excellent).
Your body produces cholesterol naturally, without any meat or dairy. In my case it actually produces way more than I need, even on a vegan diet, because of genetic factors. People should test their LDL and evaluate whether eating cholesterol is healthy _for themselves_ as it’s different for everyone.
Common sense says that adults are not embryos and humans are not chickens, so if eggs are nutritious for adult humans, it's more of a happy coincidence.
Our hunter gather ancestors ate eggs when they could find them, probably often uncooked. What they generally didn't come across were trees full of snickers bars, coke and Wonder Bread.
Dietary cholesterol does not affect blood serum cholesterol and recommendations to limit cholesterol intake were removed from AHA and ADA guidelines in 2011 and 2013 respectively... the fact that this "common knowledge" still persists is disappointing.
The Paleo diet is utter nonsense. Human gut biome and ability to process different foods evolves far far far faster than that. We are nothing like our paleo ancestors.
Nah, probably just shifting fronts of lobbying. That said new recommendations match way closer what I consider to be a good diet for myself (more calories from fats, less from carbs). Of course everything in moderation.
There was a story about this in the NYT recently (can't find it) and IIRC, it basically said protein is out and fiber is in. It wasn't that simple, but that was my takeaway.
Honestly, you can find studies to prove just about anything when it comes to nutrition. Too much money involved. Sometimes you have to use common sense or try different diets to see how your body reacts. I find "high fiber" and "low protein" to be a suspicious suggestion though. Protein generally has a small insulin response, your body actually needs protein, and if things like the "protein leverage hypothesis" are correct it can also help with satiety. Fiber, on the other hand, is literally food stuff that can't be digested. It can be helpful for your colon bacteria, but that's about it.
Just because an article comes from Harvard doesn't mean it's correct -- Harvard scientists were also behind the original food pyramid, and were likely paid off by the sugar industry.
Fiber greatly lowers your blood sugar response because you can't digest it. It also lowers your blood cholesterol for the same reason, so it's often recommended for those with a risk of CVD to eat more fruits and vegetables. It also protects against colorectal cancer for similar reasons.
Turns out just slowing down digestion can have a lot of benefits.
Also, most Americans eat very, very little fiber. Anything is an improvement. I believe the FDA recommendation is 30 grams a day, and most Americans eat, like, 2.
However, most Americans are not deficient in protein. They eat lots of meat, and very little veggies.
Well, true on the blood sugar response, but you can also lower the blood sugar response by not eating high-glycemic-index foods in the first place. Or, you could eat resistant starches if you really want a starch. So I don't necessarily disagree with you, but unless you're living a very active lifestyle I think it'd be better to remove carbs than add fiber.
The thing is basically nobody eats enough fiber, so that's one big ticket optimization you can make. And the trouble with "eat less carbs" is that people take that and run with it, and cut out fruits and veggies, which is not going to help them.
I agree people should eat less carbs in general, but we need to be careful. Ultimately, replacing kale or something with bacon, which is basically tobacco in meat form, isn't going to improve their health. Eat less carbs, eat more protein, but eat the right protein, and the right carbs.
> Sometimes you have to use common sense or try different diets to see how your body reacts.
I sometimes wonder if the complexity of the human body doesn't stop us from seeing things that can have great positive effect on a set of people because it's counteracted by the effect on another set of people so the result in the whole is cancelled out. I now wonder if the statistic methods used in these studies take this into account.
All this to say that I approve of controlled self-experimentation, but you need to be very rigorous and brutally honest. Most people are not.
i think about this a lot and i genuinely believe that for every fringe diet or supplementation regimen, there exists a population it would genuinely benefit, for at least some point in their lives
but it's tricky to figure out and i assume the consensus rules are good enough for most people
Google tells me that 2 lbs of steak contains between 225 and 270 grams of protein. That would be well over the threshold that the article I linked to a couple of posts up mentions:
> Your kidneys process all the extra nitrogen from the protein, and when you’re eating 200 grams a day, sometimes they just can’t keep up and they get stressed.
Beyond the protein insulin response... when you have protein with sufficient fat, the insulin effect is much, much lower still. I tend to suggest that people try to get about 0.5g fat to 1g protein (which is slightly more calories from fat than protein). I think the aversion to fat is problematic and likely a lack of sufficient well rounded fat intake is likely a factor in the fertility and other hormonal issues in western society today.
I still find it suspicious. "Moderate" protein sounds great, because "moderate" anything sounds great. The question is what "moderate" actually means. I think the people that encourage more protein are generally suggesting that the guidelines for "moderate" are actually too low.
Tangent, but it reminds me of how people consider a "balanced" diet to be 1/3rd protein, 1/3rd fat, 1/3rd carbs. It sounds good, until you consider the purpose of carbs. Carb's aren't inherently bad of course, but they have glucose which stimulates an insulin response, resulting in storing more food as fat. And considering how many obese people we have, the "balanced" diet seems to be very unbalanced. The thing with carbs is, you really only need to take them in if you're very actively doing anaerobic exercise. If you're doing that, great! Then you should eat carbs. If you're sitting at a desk 8 hours a day and not exercising at all, then you really don't need much in the way of carbs at all.
Higher fiber seems, at best, to not move the needle much at all. At worst you could irritate various gut linings. Fiber in things like fruit can be good because it moderates the absorption of fructose, but I generally don't think you need to supplement fiber at all.
Unless you're doing something blatantly wrong or have a very specific disorder like coeliac, diet just doesn't have very much influence on health. There are a very wide range of diets that are more-or-less equally healthy, within a margin of error. Humans are highly adaptable omnivores that have evolved to survive and thrive on a broader range of foods than pretty much any other species. The data seems so mixed because the effect sizes of reasonable interventions are so small - a tiny signal drowned out by noise.
The entire problem is that most people in high- and middle-income countries are in fact doing something blatantly wrong - they are consistently eating vastly more calories than they use. Some of those people are ignorant of what 2000 to 2500 calories actually looks like, some are deluded, but a very large proportion know damned well that they're eating far too much and do it anyway.
The obesogenic environment that we now live in is partly due to the influence of the processed foods industry, but in large part it's simply a product of abundance. Before the late 20th century, it was simply inconceivable that poor people could afford to become morbidly obese. Agricultural productivity has improved beyond all recognition and the world is flooded with incredibly cheap food of all kinds.
We've spent the last few decades trying to push back against that with all manner of initiatives intended to endgender behavioural change, with very little success. It doesn't really matter what guidance we give people when they have shown a consistent inability or unwillingness to follow it.
If we're actually serious about the effects of diet on public health, I think there are only two credible options - extremely heavy-handed regulation, or the mass prescribing of GLP-1 receptor agonists. All of the other options are just permutations of "let's do more of the thing that hasn't worked".
If the current government gave me 500 dollars and told me the sky was blue I'd start checking to be sure it wasn't a scam, yeah? Even if they say something that sounds true you want to look for the trick.
Yep. I switched to this sort of diet a few months back and there's been no downsides. I've gotten needed weight loss, more energy, better skin, and better mood.
There was a temporary period where I had some GI issues from changing what I ate very abruptly, but that wore off as my gut bacteria adapted
There is no public health consensus advocating for widesoread adoption of the diet RFK Jr is pushing here. There are significant parts of this that if anything the consensus suggests is unhealthy.
It's a fad diet being recommended, and parts of the advice being good don't make it good overall.
This is not consistent with multiple doctors over the years recommending eating less meat (specially beef), less cheese. The only part that is consistent with most doctors is the base thesis of eating more whole foods.
Based on the science appendix it seems like the inclusion of a "low carb diet" is more toward disease treatment and not health promotion. This would be antithetical to the DGA in years past and is kind of useless. The appendix itself acknowledges that the long term effects of a "low carb diet" are muted in the long term, which is probably why you would never hear it hawked by a nutrition professional as a healthy eating pattern.
The restrictions on SNAP are insidious because SNAP is supposed to enable one to live a normal life -- and that includes occasionally buying things that are not "healthy" in a bubble. The mantra that many health professionals will use is "there are no unhealthy foods, only unhealthy diets". Combine all that background with traditional stigma associated with SNAP/food stamp benefits and a picture starts to emerge of why policy was to embrace more foods and how this administration is often called the "administration of harm".
> Nor do I understand the negative reactions to new restrictions on SNAP - candy and sugary drinks are no longer eligible
My understanding is that it adds a complex layer of regulation where one did not previously exist. Large retailers and grocers have the systems that can accurately track this. (Essentially: does your POS have the ability to sync with the Federally Approved Foods For Poors list or not.)
Smaller convenience stores (more common in places where poor people live) are less likely to have the resources be able to comply. Rather than get sanctioned for accidentally selling a Gatorade on SNAP, they will simply pull out of SNAP altogether. This means that even the non-sugary foods they have will no longer be available to people on SNAP.
The net effect is expected to be to remove SNAP purchasing ability from entire geographies. I understand the effect is expected to be most pronounced in rural and dense urban areas.
I freaked out when I realized I had to change my diet. "What do I eat then?" was my constant mantra for six months. Looking back, it wasn't that bad but something in me really freaked out at having to change a habit (that I wanted to change...)
A lot of red meat is probably one angle I can’t get behind. They are very high in cholesterol and triglycerides which are deadly for the heart over the long haul.
You wouldn’t happen to know the specific genetic markers for this, it’s the only thing I’d like to know about myself so I could eat eggs guilt free. A cursory search keeps giving me not the results I want to see.
The problem is that when people say "red meat" they're almost always referring to the modern "hamburger-like substance" which almost certainly high on the ultra-processed scale.
An actual steak or hamburger ground at a butcher would be a pretty gigantic step up for most people.
This department is led by an insane person who constantly says ridiculous things. It's not a "purely political reflex" to have an initial bad reaction to anything he puts out. The fact that this is fairly sensible is quite surprising. I'm sure it won't last, and we'll soon be back to saying Advil causes schizophrenia or whatever the next round of madness is.
While I despise this administration, as a celiac I’m very hopeful for any cultural shift away from grains. People truly do not realize how often they will reach for some processed bread for nearly every single meal.
"hell hath no fury like taking away nerds' Mountain Dew and Flamin' Hot Cheetos"
Its an addiction. Try taking away an alcoholic's alcohol and sit back and enjoy the infinite rationalizations about how its heart healthy and lowers stress and its just a couple a night, etc etc.
I think this is at least better than the old food pyramid, though not perfect. It's a step in the right direction.
What I hate, and react against, is the package deal. We get a better food pyramid, but we also get antivax imbeciles and a resurgence in easily preventable diseases. We get an official nod of approval given to idiots who think you can treat cancer with "alternative" treatments. We get blaming autism on Tylenol with incomplete and inadequate data or, wait, maybe not, or maybe, or whatever that was.
I think it reflects a deeper problem though. The "crunchy" "natural" alt-med orbits have usually had better ideas about nutrition. They've historically been right about whole vs. processed foods, more protein and fats and less simple carbs, sugar being bad, etc. Unfortunately they've historically been wrong about most other things. They're wrong about vaccines, wrong about just how powerful and effective diets can be, mostly wrong about psych meds, and wrong about giving the nod to unmitigated quackery like homeopathy.
I also think that tends to be a common problem with any and all populism, whether left or right. The present establishment may be corrupt or broken, but replacing it is hard, especially when it tends to have a talent monopoly. "Serious" people who go into medicine go to college, then grad school / med school, then get licensed, etc., and pick up establishment views. The people who want to do medicine but don't take this path tend to be amateurs and quacks and weird ideologues.
Venezuela's been in the news lately. My understanding of what happened to their oil industry is: they had it working okay with professionals doing it, and then there was a populist revolution. Then they kicked out all the professionals. Then they had no idea how to run an oil industry. The professionals were linked to a foreign power and probably taking too much profit at the expense of the Venezuelan people, yes, but they also knew how to extract petrol.
Edit: You see more sympathy here than many other educated places for this stuff, and there's a reason for that.
I think CS people are extremely open to autodidactism, probably too open, and I think that's because CS and programming is one of the few serious fields where it is actually common for an autodidact to equal or exceed a trained professional.
The zero capital cost near-zero real world implication nature of computational experimentation facilitates this. You can just read open literature and sit and play until you get good and it harms nobody and costs almost nothing. Math is another field where there have been genius autodidacts that have made huge discoveries. The arts are obviously mostly like this, excluding those that are very hard to learn alone or have capital costs.
Medicine is definitely not a field like this. I don't think you can autodidact medicine. As a result, doctors outside the establishment are usually not good. There have been historical examples, but few, and most of them came up through the ranks of real medicine before pushing a radical idea that turned out to be right.
Also note that even in CS and math, most outsider ideas are wrong. Outsider ideas are kind of like high risk / high reward investments. It's very hard for anyone, insider-trained or not, to formulate a deeply contrarian or wholly original idea that is correct, but when someone does it makes the news because it's both rare and often high impact. The hundreds of thousands to millions of deeply contrarian or original ideas that were worthless or wrong don't make the news.
I think you're worried too much about specific tribes and groups, and less about what information is good or bad. End of the day almost any source is going to tell you some things that are useful, some things that are useless, and some things that are actively harmful. I'm not trying to say all sources are equal, but mainstream medicine has a lot to answer for in terms of giving bad advice for decades (both now and historically). For a long time mainstream medicine also thought smoking was healthy and bloodletting was a way to treat infections. I don't say that to mean "don't see doctors" or "get your nutritional advice from chiropractors", I just think it's worth pointing out that with ANY source you need to wary. Autodidactism is a very good thing IF you use critical thinking when evaluating your sources.
I think the point being made is that the challenge is when it comes to medicine, lay people can't even begin to understand the research and can't form their own opinion. So for those of us without MD's, we HAVE to trust someone to tell us what works and what doesn't. Giving mixed signals really screws that up as I can't personally assess what is good medicine and what isn't.
Regarding, smoking and bloodletting, the former was bought and paid for by industry, that is just fraud. For the latter, there are cases where bloodletting actually works. Medieval medicine isn't the backward thinking we often ascribe to it and many would argue that it wasn't a "Dark" ages at all. There are even modern instances where maggots are the best solution for cleaning wounds. Even given that history, the recent advances by people whose jobs I can't even begin to understand, can nuke my entire immune system to treat a cancer and bring me back to full health. That is not something an autodidactic can do.
Just for anyone reading - the food pyramid was canned over 15 years ago. MAHA promotes it as absurd in order to criticize it even though food guidelines have been evidence-based and extremely reasonable since the early Obama years. Their entire grift is built on deceit.
> What I hate, and react against, is the package deal. We get a better food pyramid, but we also get antivax imbeciles and a resurgence in easily preventable diseases.
Clearly if you eat a T-bone steak and half a dozen eggs daily combined with 25 pull-ups, you don’t need any vaccines.
Frankly I just don’t trust federal health info while RFK jr. Is at the helm. 2 days ago they reduced the recommended scheduled vaccines from 19->11 with absolutely no evidence or process. All vibes and conspiracies.
Why should I trust them with the food pyramid? How do I know if anyone who actually has expertise was consulted when his signature move has been axe experts and bring in “skeptics” with no actual background since day 1?
I’m supposed to play ball and accept health advice from the antivaxxer who has led to countless unnecessary deaths? Who walked up with the president and said “Tylenol is linked to autism” with no evidence?
No way.
Edit: it’s worth mentioning that he and a bunch of “MAHA” proponents cite the natural and healthy food in Europe but never want to use the dirty word that makes it happen: regulation. If we are serious about unhealthy additives and other food concerns, then we need robust regulations. They aren’t serious about change. It’s easy to go “we’re gonna have everyone eat healthy and natural stuff” but when it counts they won’t do what is necessary. [also toned down my heated language]
I agree. This is nearly the exact diet anyone with credibility has suggested for a long long time. If you get into the bro-science(which I believe tends to front run mainstream by a long ways), this is the diet every athlete and gym rat has been doing for years and years, with AMAZING results.
That's starting to change... mostly in that exceeding 14g:1kg ratio mentioned in TFA is being shown to have worse results, so some more recent recommendations are that you need to get enough protein, but not too much.
My own opinion is that you should also get at least 0.5g fat to 1g protein as a baseline... more would be for energy in lieu of carbs.
For all the lunacy of RFK this somehow is actually a really good set of guidelines? Certainly better than the previous version. I didn't expect that to be honest.
I had a similar reaction. Although I can't help but notice that even in something like this it included the now obligatory combative culture war framing with "we are ending the war on protein".
That's not how it works, they're just inflating the importance of their work by elevating it to a battlefield, and they're the heroes.
You see it across all kinds of industries. Presumably each individual is just engaged in the solitary imaginary thought war. Surely they're not soldiers on multiple fronts. Superheroes?
There is a difference between inflating your work, and flat out lie. The previous guidelines weren’t against protein at all. The mentioned war didn’t exist at all in these. The protein target is about the same as 10 years ago. Back then the only recommendation regarding this was, that more seafood and nuts would be better for almost everybody, and for some people less meat. So generally, that we should consume more protein. So the “war” wasn’t there.
Those DEMOCRAT SOYBOYS are gonna hate this, but I'm gonna say it anyways. Today we're joining the WAR on protein- ON THE SIDE OF THE PROTEIN.
It's an idiocracy bit, the continual flanderization of the USA. It reminds me of carlin's act about how everything we do has to be contextualized into war: we can't just solve homelessness, we have to declare WAR on homelessness (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lncLOEqc9Rw).
Which ones? The guidelines this replaced were "half your plate should be fruits and vegetables, the other half protein and grains (at least half of which should be whole grains)." That's not way different from this.
There are differences: the previous guidelines are very down on saturated fat, for example. But I feel like a lot of people are imagining that this is replacing the old food pyramid with the huge grain section at the bottom bigger than everything else, when that's been gone for over a decade.
Realistically I don't think these guidelines really have much effect at all, except maybe things like school lunch programs that may be downstream of them.
The pyramid references in the link is from 1992, it even says so on the page. I think that going to war against the recommendations from 1992 feels a bit...dishonest?
How do we marry that "dishonesty" with the fact that the previous food pyramid was the dietary guidelines officially endorsed by the US government, represented in posters and taught in primary school classrooms?
A stopped clock is right twice a day. A running clock set incorrectly is correct zero times a day. If you have an incorrect clock, the solution isn't to stop the clock, it's to set it correctly and fix the process
I think it says that industries have a lot of power over governments in the US, especially when they are critical to people's survival. The food industry has enormous power, maybe more than any other industry in the US. Few other industries mint their own laws that fly in the face of the constitution as well as the food industry. Ag Gag laws are crazy. People talk about people being labelled terrorists for activities that are obviously not terrorism. Animal Rights activists who go to extremes have been familiar with that for a while now.
I disagree I think nutrition guidence is extremely important and in the precense of horrible examples nations get really unhealthy. The only country 1st world country not to have really obese people is Japan (~5% obese ~20% overweight). (~35% obsese ~70% overweight US) and I'd wager a large part of that is the fact that kids cook for themselves in school so they learn early what a reasonable meal is. They also learn how to cook not that they do that forever but setting reasonable food expectations is extremely important.
Being obese as a kid is almost causal for being obese later in life[1] as becoming obese screws up a lot of your bodies biology permenantly. You can of course change and become healthier but many lingering symptoms linger regardless of you losing weight. While still 70% obese adults were not obese as children 80% of obese children end up being obese.
Open to other ideas but school meals and peoples relationship with food is extremely important to maintaining weight in my experience.
> The only country 1st world country not to have really obese people is Japan (~5% obese ~20% overweight). (~35% obsese ~70% overweight US) and I'd wager a large part of that is the fact that kids cook for themselves in school so they learn early what a reasonable meal is.
There might also be a genetic factor, why japanese are less obese or overweight, because the difference for diabetes patients between US and japan is a lot smaller.
There is no genetic factor because when Japanese people move to the States they are as obese as america's within 2 generation. I want to find the study but I think they end up being physically lighter because of other factors but are just as obese or overweight as americas[1]. The reasoning from the paper is that Japanese 2nd generation adopted western cultures eating habits
That's clearly true, given people by and large know what's good and bad for them but their consumption choices need to factor in a much larger set of pressing constraints like price, availability, and readiness and more abstract constraints like "am I able to be at home with my child and cook for them or do I need to work a second job to make ends meet?" I will not trust a single word from RFK's mouth until he has something to say about food deserts and prices and a plan to do something about it. Until then, he's done the easiest part which bureaucrats specialize in, which is publishing an updated set of guidelines.
What does it say about the current administration that appointed a science-denying halfwit to run HHS and knowingly kill children with his anti-vaxx bullsh*t?
And 52 GOP coward senators that approved the idiot. The only stand out was Mitch McConnell because he was almost paralyzed by polio as a child and knows first hand the damage RFK is doing.
I'm amazed the new guidelines don't recommend a daily portion of roadkill, preferably raw.
from what i can tell, most of this is existing stuff that advocates have been trying to push for a while now.
i think it's a perfect example of why advocates for any policy should have specific, achievable, and well-documented goals - you never know who might be an ally. politicians don't want to do this sort of detailed work, they're looking for preexisting policy they can champion, and if you're standing there ready to hand it to them when they're looking for it you get get good stuff done.
Even before RFK Jr rubbed his metaphorical nutsack all over our healthcare system, doctors pretty much always told me to eat better. They told me to avoid processed foods, avoid sugar, and focus on fiber and protein.
I don't know why RFK Jr. is getting credit for telling people to eat healthy, especially since some of his recommendations (e.g. telling people to eat french fries if they're fried in beef tallow) are actively bad and will likely lead to people becoming more overweight and less healthy.
Because nobody else changed the food pyramid to be somewhat not-garbage until him. Who else would you congratulate for this specific action? Your own personal doctor??
Michelle Obama provided very similar guidance in around 2011 and every conservatively collectively lost their shit over it.
The food pyramid wasn't really used in recent years by the US government, and changed to "MyPlate" in 2011, and if you actually read its guidelines nothing on there is terribly offensive.
I have not seen the pyramid with bread, cereal, rice and pasta at the base pushed for at least ~20 years. Maybe it was 25-30 years ago when I saw it pushed seriously in school and even then I did not see people taking it seriously outside of those lessons, as in people actively calling it questionable.
Where in the world was this old pyramid still being pushed?
It's a pretty straight-forward question - you can just say "Michelle Obama" or whoever you're referring to instead. I never understand the desire to actively present yourself as someone throwing a tantrum.
If that's not who you're referring to, please correct me.
You made a claim about how RFK Jr. was the only person to fix the food pyramid.
It is unlikely that if you are old enough to vote that you do not remember that Michelle Obama tried to make a more healthy food criteria, and as such it’s very easy to assume that you are acting in bad faith when you say something about RFK Jr that is objectively not true.
It’s a pretty bad assumption. You should pay a lot more attention to Hanlon’s Razor.
I don’t know much at all about Michelle’s actions. Similarly, I don’t know much about Melania’s actions. You say she tried to - so… she didn’t do it? If not, I don’t see how this makes my comment “objectively untrue”?
Sure he may be a meathead moron who can only advocate that the military should get jacked, but if the military really DOES need to get in better shape and his brainiac predecessors weren’t actually doing anything about that, he’s actually functionally smarter than them.
So to answer your question, if RFK is doing the thing that needs to be done, he should get the credit.
I don’t know enough about the military to say for sure if Pete Hegseth’s stuff is stupid or reductive. I suspect it is, I am pretty sure that the military has had pretty aggressive physical training for decades and he contributed literally nothing to this conversation (like basically everything the Trump admin does that isn’t actively destructive), but maybe I am wrong.
The food pyramid was removed in 2011 and replaced with MyPlate, which was much more reasonable than the food pyramid. Of course, it was heavily criticized by conservatives because they claimed it was a “nanny state”.
But of course, like everyone in Trump’s circle, RFK Jr. rebrands someone else’s work, pretends he is the first person to ever suggest eating healthy, and then every stupid Trump voter with the apparent memory retention of a goldfish acts like he was the first person to ever suggest eating healthy.
It actually behaves surprisingly well when you just scroll with the spacebar, as I always do[1].
[1] note: using this method (spacebar to jump one screenful, and shift-spacebar to go back up) on sites that insist on doing the "sTiCkY hEaDeR" idiocy results in losing a line or two on every page, so, I guess, don't get too used to it as it's hard to use today.
Better than which one? I don't think it's really an improvement over either the exercise slice pyramid nor the "choose my plate" recommendation. It is better than the popular one from the 90s though, sure.
The problem in my eyes is that it's performative. They're making this announcement as if they're doing something revolutionary (they're switching the food pyramid diagram around) while at the same time doing so much to damage the health of Americans: dramatically cutting healthcare access, bringing vaccine denialism to the mainstream, holding press conferences in which they wildly assert that nobody should ever take Tylenol, elevating discourse around quackerism like Methylene blue. The list goes on. And they're making this announcement after spending the entirity of the Obama administration vilifying Flotus for trying to raise awareness of healthy eating.
Its the same thing with eliminating red40 dye. its a crumb. At the very least they should end corn syrup subsidies. Its telling how people often bring up people buying candy with food stamps, but never trace the source of the problem back to how we subsidize bad food. America has a huge blindspot for corporate welfare
You don't think that's in part because of economics, education, healthcare, or other factors? The framing of this site is that it is purely a "you're eating wrong" problem.
A large part of the world population is poor, and they do not have the same level of health problems, nor are they similarly obese. Not purely diet related, but a huge part of it for sure.
There's absolutely no need for the average American to eat more protein, we are eating more protein than ever and health outcomes are not improving. Likewise, the dairy intake recommendation is not backed by any science whatsoever.
When I went as a kid with my parents to the US, there was this 'milk, it does a body good' commercial playing all the time. While in my country there was already talk that it really doesn't do a body good. Not sure what it ended up with, but we definitely never had the kind of gallons of milk in the fridge and grabbing cartons when you want something to drink.
Most of it seems fine, although eating even more meat than we already do is a bit perplexing.
The new "guidelines" for alcohol are pretty laughable though. I say that as someone who enjoys his fair share of beers. “The implication is don’t have it for breakfast," <- direct quote from celebrity Dr Oz during the press conference.
This has been the running theme so far: Big talk to energize the base and make a splash, followed by actual policy implementations that are much more down to earth.
Remember all the talk about banning COVID vaccines? In the end they just changed the wording of the federal recommendations and included things like "having a sedentary lifestyle" as one of the vague reasons to get a COVID vaccine. In some states you had to get a doctor to write a prescription, annoyingly, but the overall picture is that it's still much easier to get a COVID vaccine in the US than under something like the NHS.
Too late to edit, but I see I'm getting downvoted.
To clarify, I'm not in support of the actions or the administration. I'm just pointing out that this is becoming a trend where they say one thing but do something milder.
I'm surprised that governments didn't take this problem more seriously. Obesity is a huge problem, people have been ignoring it only because improvements in medicine have been offsetting the general health decline. Without the medical improvements that save the life of obese people, life expectancy would have decreased. I don't expect the Trump administration to make the best decisions but at least they are taking it somewhat more seriosly.
I don't believe the creators of this propaganda take this problem seriously at all. Their actions speak far louder than their words, even words on a page that scrolls weird like it's 2015.
Republicans were actively angry at past attempts to fight obesity or limit sugar.
There is another side to the nutrition recommendations beyond pure nutrition and that's economics. Pro business Republicans were loathe to anger big food producers.
On the flip side, this new food guide is now advocating a diet that is far more expensive for average consumers at a time when food inflation is already hurting so many households.
There remains concerns about saturated fat, especially for those with high cholesterol levels. I recognize that mistakes have been made in the past (low fat diets, fear of salt, etc), but it seems like RFK et al are driven by ideology rather than science.
That’s what he’s famous for, huh? Nobody knew who he was until he burst onto the national stage because of his brain worm. And please show a source that he was “proud” of the affliction.
Well, it's... what we've been told to do (at least in the rest of the world) for more than a century? Packaged as some "app-like" / "tech-like" website?
If the old wisdom is correct then there is no issue in regurgitating it in a format suitable for a modern audience. We departed from it for a very long time, especially in regards to fat and processed foods. America has been been on a sharp decline in diet-related health.
The deeper problem is that you can feed a family with a few bucks at a fast food joint. Eating correctly costs money, money that Americans don't have.
> deeper problem is that you can feed a family with a few bucks at a fast food joint. Eating correctly costs money, money that Americans don't have
A fast-food meal is an expensive meal by global standards. The problem is partly cost. And party education and time. But it’s almost certainly not income.
> The deeper problem is that you can feed a family with a few bucks at a fast food joint. Eating correctly costs money, money that Americans don't have.
No you can't, in reality. It only seems so because the fast-food industry is heavily subsidized by taxpayer dollars.
Organic food would be much more affordable otherwise
I don't think there was guidance to avoid ultra processed foods 100 years ago anywhere in the world. I don't believe that concept even existed, let alone was promulgated by health authorities. But I'd lkvd to be proven wrong.
The problem is the massive emphasis on eating as a part of health. As if eating right is the only thing you need to do to avoid all disease. That putting other substances (e.g. vaccines) in your body will make you unhealthy.
The man is stark raving bonkers mad in that head-in-the-sand, if-I-ignore-science-then-it-can't-hurt-me way but (and OMG I think I'm going to throw up a little in my mouth even coming close to agreeing with anything that come out of his mouth) isn't that basically what we've been doing with dietary guidelines since the 80s?
Like, don't get me wrong, RFK will kill N*10^5, N*10^6 people with his outlook on diseases, but....how many people have had their lives wrecked by "fat makes you fat", "ketchup is a vegetable", and "eat a balanced diet composed entirely of sausage, flour, and sugar"? As a GenXer I've been dealing with the echoes of this for a long time.
"Isn't that basically what we've been doing with dietary guidelines since the 80s?"
If by this you mean to ask if the new guidelines are the same as previous ones from the 80s, then no. The new pyramid is different, makes different recommendations (more meat, for instance, and less wheat and grains). The website linked to explicitly shows how it is different from the previous "food pyramid" guidelines.
No, what I meant was "haven't we been basically ignoring science on nutrition since the 80s?" I think we have.
For those who don't believe me - go find some old family photos of your parents or grandparents, whichever generation would have been young adults in the 1960s or 1970s. Compare them to people of the same age born any time after, say, 1990. Nothing come of one sample, but people from the previous generation just weren't fat in their 20s like we are.
Yes, there's more to it than that. But food is a big part of it.
You went on a bit of a rant there - lol. I like the new guidelines they explicitly disavow processed food. As for vaccines, not everyone complaining about specific vaccines is anti vax.
A lot of vaccines are also region specific. Eg HK does TB vax for kids because Nannie’s from Indonesia carry TB. No one does the TB vax in the US.
A lot of vaccines are tailored towards the mother going back to work. They could be tailored for a later schedule if there is concern about secondary effects like autism and the child is being cared for at home.
Again I’m not anti vax but I also don’t think the protocol designers are providing alternative options which they should.
My kids are all vaccinated according to schedule. Calling me an anti vaxxer is cheap trolling.
And yes - if kids have had serious impacts to vaccines parents should be told and providers should encourage reporting into vaers
I put autism there because it’s the most commonly used anecdote when discussing this. I’m not saying take the vax away. Eg if mmrv is the big bad vax for autism - change its schedule to be given after 2 yrs after autism tests.
Talking about "concern for secondary effects like autism" legitimizes the theory, whether you wanted to or not; that's why the person you responded to got annoyed.
Listening to him talk about the Spanish Flu, and clearly not understand why secondary bacterial infections killed more people than the flu itself, was my personal point of "wow, this guy is an idiot".
In his book "The Real Anthony Fauci" he spends a whole chapter claiming that HIV does not cause AIDS and it was actually caused by recreational drug use.
He believes germ theory is a creation of Big Pharma to push "patented pills, powders, pricks, potions, and poisons and the powerful professions of virology and vaccinology"
He believes in the miasma theory and just maintaining a healthy immune is enough to keep you from getting sick.
Just read his book, "The Real Anthony Fauci" and you'll realize that this man shouldn't be trusted to run a kindergarten nurses office.
We don’t need good vaccines anymore even though infectious diseases are on the rise. Other global medical experts seem to be going against many of his plans.
> There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective. [interviewer pushes back, brings up polio vaccine] So if you say to me, “The polio vaccine, was it effective against polio?” I’m going to say, “Yes.” And if say to me, “Did it cause more death than avert?” I would say, “I don’t know, because we don’t have the data on that.”
> The most popular vaccine in the world is the DTP vaccine. [...] That vaccine caused so many injuries that Wyeth, which was the manufacturer, said to the Reagan administration, “We are now paying $20 in downstream liabilities for every dollar that we’re making in profits, and we are getting out of the business unless you give us permanent immunity from liability.” And by the way, Reagan said at that time, “Why don’t you just make the vaccine safe?” And why is that? Because vaccines are inherently unsafe. They said, “Unavoidably unsafe, you cannot make them safe.”
Not going quote the whole thing because it's long, but he repeatedly drives home his point that all vaccines are inherently unsafe, and the injuries and deaths they cause always outweigh their effectiveness against disease.
> I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby and I say to him, ‘Better not get him vaccinated.’ And he heard that from me. If he hears it from 10 other people, maybe he won’t do it, you know, maybe he will save that child.
> If you’re one of 10 people that goes up to a guy, a man or a woman, who’s carrying a baby, and says, ‘Don’t vaccinate that baby,’ when they hear that from 10 people, it’ll make an impression on ‘em, you know. And we all kept our mouth shut. Don’t keep your mouth shut anymore. Confront everybody on it.
This one is interesting because the interviewer prompts him with something like "we aren't anti-vaccine, we just want to make sure they're safe" and he does not agree, he repeatedly says, with no qualification, "tell everyone not to vaccinate their children".
I don't believe he has ever voluntarily made a positive public comment about any vaccine. He did during his confirmation hearing, but he was obviously heavily incentivized to do so. During that hearing he did not say his opinion had changed, he simply lied about all past comments and claimed they never happened.
The end result of his vax push has been to reduce the set of government required vaccines down to the same set used by Europe already. Additional vaccination is still available should an individual elect.
Are you of the opinion that the European recommendation is insufficient? Would you petition European healthcare industry that they are requiring too few vaccines? If so, I would expect Europeans to be chronically far more diseased than Americans, do we see that in the data?
The only outlier is Hepatitis A, which is still recommended in some European countries. On the reverse side, the meningococcal vaccine is commonly scheduled in Europe but not in the US.
Once those additional vaccines are off the "routine" schedule, they'll be pulled by the suppliers, because it eliminates exemption from lawsuits. If you "choose" a non-routine vaccination, people can then sue pharma for ANY harm, and you can be sure there'll be a bunch of crackpot right-wingers trying to prove each one is "bad" and they'll disappear sooner or later. RFK's fans (Del Bigtree) have admitted that this is their plan. And if they're NOT routine, they'll probably not be covered by insurance, so you'll have to pay hundreds or thousands to get one. I would still do that, but not many others will.
Electing to get all ZERO optional vaccines actually available to you because of "reasons" isn't much of a choice.
"Once those additional vaccines are off the "routine" schedule, they'll be pulled by the suppliers, because it eliminates exemption from lawsuits"
Why is this bad? From one of the threads - "There IS scrutiny on vaccines, by the scientific and medical community - your "scrutiny" (as presumably neither a PhD in a relevant field or MD) is not valuable or relevant. There is decades of research that says that currently recommended vaccines are safe and effective."
OK, then there won't be grounds for lawsuits or lawsuits will be easily dismissed.
"you can be sure there'll be a bunch of crackpot right-wingers trying to prove each one is "bad" and they'll disappear sooner or later" - This logic can be applied to literally any product, be it a medicine, a vaccine, or any consumer good. Somehow pharma companies are able to sell any other drug without going into bankruptcy.
They are based on denmark's guidelines, which as you know is a very cold country.
One of the vaccines made strictly optional was for dengue, which is not really a thing in denmark since I think they don't have that many mosquitos due to weather.
However, in the US, mosquitos and tropical weather are common for a large part of the population.
Point being, a huge country with a huge variety of climates and diseases shouldn't follow the lead of a small country with a fairly homogenous weather and disease pattern.
Antivax, avocated against pasteurization, thinks fries are healthy when fried in beef tallow, swam in sewers with his grandkids to prove the human body is naturally immune to diseases and vaccines are unnecessary, tried to ban paracetamol based on bad research linking it to autism, and much more if you care to dig a little.
He's never been anti-vax, though he has advocated for better data about vaccines with good reason--it's abominable. He's advocated against requiring milk to be pasteurized. One of the few reasonable datasets suggesting it doesn't help is the amish. The other ones sound weird so I will indeed dig a little.
> One of the few reasonable datasets suggesting it doesn't help is the amish
When you literally live on the farm where the cow is milked, there is less benefit to pasteurization, yes. Unless you want us to live like the Amish, then let's keep our pasteurized milk, OK?
Some of us do want to live near where our food comes from and eat it fresh. I haven't seen anyone advocating that pasteurization should be banned, just that raw milk should be un-banned.
You were never forced to, don't change the subject. Issue is with the secretary of health spreading obvious lies about pasteurization, a process that saved countless lives over the course of more than a century.
Acetaminophen, honestly, shouldn't be recommended so frequently, especially for kids, and if he's against it, I view that as a big point in his favor. The distance between the therapeutic and liver toxic doses is too small for kids, less than 2.5x the max recommended dose, and it's based on kid's weight, so very young kids can't really be given the amount shown on the box. For example, a hepatotoxic dose for my 5 year old based on their weight is just 3/4 of the adult daily max recommended dose. That's a pointy-ass UX failure.
Growing up, my mom, a pediatrician, never let tylenol in the house because she saw too many kids come through the pediatric ER with liver failure because of it in her hospital shifts. It's the leading cause of acute liver toxicity in the US.
Anti-vaccine, anti-tylenol, stating that circumcision causes autism, stating wireless 5G damages DNA, stating that vaccines are part of a anti-black conspiracy, hiv/aids denialism, believing that contrails are actually chemtrails, etc etc etc.
I chose that source intentionally to underscore that nobody on any part of the political spectrum is actually contesting he said or believes these things. Regardless of how they choose to view them.
Unfortunately there seems to be no good aligned definition of what (highly) processed food is. 1,2
Whole grain bread or infant formula can be “highly processed” despite very healthy.
In the end someone else cooks for you and packages it. They can cook healthy or not or in between, add a lot of salt or little, .. as always it’s more complex.
People who complain about “processed foods” generally have a basic misunderstanding of chemical/biochemical processes and energy gradients or activation energies.
Ultimately, everything is highly processed or we’d be eating rocks. The magnificent manufacturing line in animal or even plant cells is one of the most processed things at the finest molecular level that we know!
That's not really what we're talking about here though. An apple isn't the same as an apple juice which isn't the same as an apple flavored candy, even you can appreciate the difference of processing in these simple examples.
A slab of beef isn't the same as a "burger patty*" where the meat is coming from 54 different pigs, including cartilages, tendons, skin &co and contains 12 additives coming from the petrochemical industry.
The same applies to vegetarians/vegan stuff, you can make a patty from beans at home with like 3 ingredients, or buy ready made patties containing hydrogenated trans fats, bad additives, food coloring, &c.
Is there anything really wrong with cartilage, skin, tendons etc? Is that actually unhealthy or is that squeamishness? Also is there anything wrong with it coming from multiple animals? I.e. homogenisation of the product.
Doesnt really matter to his point. It could be the healthiest thing the world but still more processed than a whole steak. Remember, he's arguing against the claim that everything is processed to the point where distinguishing between degree doesnt matter. Not that tendon/cartilage are necessarily bad.
And yet we find that the foods that most people can intuitively label as "processed" come with lower satiety per calorie, unfavorable effects on blood sugar, and lower micro nutrient density per calorie. There are definitely outliers, but obvious ones are Wonderbread vs Whole grain high fiber breads (like Daves 21 grain or ezekiel bread), American cheese vs Sliced medium cheddar, even things like Sweetened apple sauce vs an Apple, White rice versus brown or "wild rice"
> In the end someone else cooks for you and packages it.
I think someone else cooking for you isn't the problem, the problem is at "packages it". Because, when you cook something at home, it's good for a few days to a week -- but food processors effectively always need various additives to keep the food shelf-stable for long enough for it to go factory -> warehouse -> store -> your house -> your meal. There are definitely exceptions (eg raisins are dried grapes, end of story) but generally this is the problem.
> Whole grain bread... very healthy.
Are you sure? Ever noticed how when you bake bread at home, it's basically 4 days on the counter before it's inedible, right? Yet commercial bread lasts for weeks.. ever wondered why that is?
As for processed food in general, I could be wrong, but my mental exercise goes along the lines of "would my great-grandma know what this is?" Eggs, butter, milk, fruits, vegetables, flour, rice, meat, fish, etc etc. But if it has an ingredients list and a nutrition label.. probably best to avoid making it a staple of your diet. Yes, I get it, cooking is a pain in the ass and everyone hates "the dinner problem", but IMO it's worth it for your health.
4 days... we bake bread from different grains: it's barely edible after 24 hours. But that is how we do it: bake a loaf early morning, eat what we need, give the rest to the animals. Just like my grandparents did.
I don't get the cooking pain or dinner problem anyway nor do I know anyone irl who has that luckily. I hear it online sometimes and then I check their profile and it becomes clear why.
Wait, do you really not understand why people have issues cooking healthy stuff for dinner? I don't think the average person can bake a loaf of bread every morning, or cook a meal for a family of four every day.
Personally I tend to batch cook for my wife and me, but my daughter's almost gonna start needing to eat solids soon, so we'll have to cook for her as well. My mom also brings us a lot of food but not every family is fortunate like that.
Meals are simple — a protein (usually meat, but sometimes beans or lentils), a carb (rice or pasta, usually rice) and veggies (frozen). Make a lot and freeze it. I can't imagine cooking real meals for 3 people every day with our work schedules.
But not having time every day is not the same as just not cook right? I cook batches since uni from fresh ingredients and freeze it; thats 30 years ago and I still do. We always have so much choise just from that while it takes cooking 1 day a week but 10 liter pots of curries etc. Now I have more time and can do more cooking so thats a luxury. I get why people cannot do that, I guess GP their comment, to me, seemed more like a burden than just no time and I find that a difference. Many take the time to spend hours in the gym just to throw crap into themselves the rest of the time.
But yes, we do the same as you generally and we can always eat well. Getting up at 5 to bake bread and make new dough for the next day is not actually eating into anything for me and I enjoy the work and the smells. It is a luxury I know that and I could not do that when in uni but most other cooking I could and did.
There's bread making techniques that allow you to make bread multiple times a week relatively easily and quickly, even without kneading.
Cold fermentation allows you the bread to rise overnight, so you can take 20 min to make the dough the night before, and then let it ferment overnight. Then the next day shape it, wait for it to proof and bake it.
Some breads also can last days, even up to weeks, even for homebaked breads without any additives.
Like for example, there's recipes where you make the dough the night before, put it in the oven after you wake up, and it's ready by the time you go to work.
Chainbaker on youtube has lots of guides for all kinds of breads.
> Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has directed the Food and Drug Administration to review the nutrients and other ingredients in infant formula, which fills the bottles of millions of American babies. The effort, dubbed “Operation Stork Speed,“ is the first deep look at the ingredients since 1998.
> “The FDA will use all resources and authorities at its disposal to make sure infant formula products are safe and wholesome for the families and children who rely on them,” Kennedy said.
I once looked at the ingredients of the baby formula product and was shocked to see some of them list high fructose corn syrup as the first ingredient. It seems like being forced to spending the first year of your life primarily feeding on industrially refined sugars is worth investigating as a cause of metabolic ills developed later in life.
I think "highly processed foods are bad" is best seen as a general rule and no more than that. However, it is a good general rule and following it is probably the easiest way for people to eat healthy.
In general, the more processing steps involved, the more things companies can do to make the food more delicious, cheaper to produce, etc., at the expense of customers' health. There is also a significant correlation between "highly processed food" and "contains way too much refined grains and oil".
However, it's absolutely possible to process the food heavily and add lots of ingredients and still maintain a healthy food if you actually care about the customer's wellbeing. It would just result in a product that is less competitive in the short term, so companies have little to no incentive to do it.
what gave you the idea that infant formula is "very healthy". definitely not the case for 99% of infant formula in the USA, it's full of canola oil and crap
I doubt the issue is with processed food. Basically everything we eat is processed (even fruit and veg is selectively bred and has been for decades if not centuries). Bread and pasta is fine.
Ultra-processed is where all of our issues are coming from. If you can't identify ingredients in something, or you see e-numbers, emulsifiers and such, it's UPF. Essentially any fast food, branded items, ready meals or heavily plastic wrapped long-shelf life stuff.
Cognitive decline and overweight conditions have risen in line with the uptake of UPF. A 10% increase in UPF leads to 25% increase in the chance of dementia. UPF lead to overeating, and the way they are processed causes them to cause insulin spikes in the body which lead to inflammation, including in the brain.
They can also be a machine that might add a non-negligible amount of mineral oils and possibly other stuff to your food. The guideline to use should be that the ingredient list should be as short as possible. If it has more than 5 ingredients, that's already incredibly suspicious in my opinion. The problem is that some stuff (like a mineral oil contamination) doesn't even have to be declared on the ingredient list.
For example, normal simple bread should only have 4 or maybe 5 ingredients.
This is my personal approach too. I stock things with fewest number of ingredients. Example that comes to mind: RXBar might be UPF but there’s not much in it. Compared to your average name brand protein bar or granola bar.
besides being loud in the media and policy, does it matter?
to keep this focused on hacker news. this is like asking the programming community to solve "some intractable social problem," and then sometimes you get an answer, "well, what we need is, a new kind of open source license."
disputes over guidelines and the meaning of highly processed, outside the academic humanities context, is kind of pointless right? if you are talking about cultural influence - you can't coerce people to eat (or not eat) something in this country, so cultural influence is the main lever government can pull regarding food - the answer to everything is, "What does Ja Rule think?" (https://www.okayplayer.com/dave-chappelles-ja-rule-joke-is-h...) that is, what do celebrities say and do? And that's why we're at where we are at, the celebrities are now "running" the HHS.
There's a definition for highly processed food, it's whatever Ja Rule says it is. Are you getting it?
For one, most all preservation methods are processing, including canning, freezing and drying. You can't possibly claim that frozen or canned veggies are unhealthy
really non-scientifically speaking, the kind of "processed" that seems to be less healthy comes closer to "pre-chewed/digested" and "concentrated" (ground very fine, broken down into constituent parts. Eg: refined flours over whole grains. corn syrup over corn on the cob (or even just frozen whole corn), Fruit juice over sliced fresh/frozen fruit.
A big challenge is how do you make rules/terms for that uneducated (on the topic) folks, disinterested folks, and lower IQ folks (MeanIQ - 1SD) can readily understand and apply in their busy + stressful lives?
To me it seems the point is “processed” == bad. Isn’t it? And NOVA seems to be the gold standard for what’s “processed”.
Of course there’s better things as whole grain bread in plastic foil (whole grain bread freshly made) or infant formula (breastfeeding). But they are more healthy than other things that rank better in NOVA.
How is it possible that beef, dairy, and chicken are front and center while Lentils, Tofu (or even just soy), Chickpeas, Nutritional Yeast, Broccoli, etc are all left off? Why do they arbitrarily split "protein" and "fruit/veg" given that most/all of the most protein dense foods are vegetables/legumes? Steak is a terrible source of protein (in terms of nutrient density). Immediately pretty suspicious.
There are nuts and legumes there in the bottom left.
So funny to see people reflexively defend those things being left off because it confirms their own beliefs. A deeper inspection of the actual guidelines has them being very fair to plant proteins:
> Consume a variety of protein foods from animal sources, including eggs, poultry, seafood, and red meat, as well as a variety of plant-sourced protein foods, including beans, peas, lentils, legumes, nuts, seeds, and soy.
The thing is... the pyramid is just a graphic, the actual words give more context.
It's not just a personal belief that plant sources are, on the whole, better from a health perspective.
Since we're talking about the actual wording of the report, it admitted the significance of previous reports deciding to order plant foods before animal products. That is reversed in this most recent report, and very intentionally, which they make clear. They also pretend that the health effects of saturated fat intake are still fuzzy, as if the evidence doesn't heavily point towards it being detrimental.
If anyone is holding to unshakeable beliefs and unwilling to consider evidence, it's the shoddy scientists (many with meat-industry related conflicting interests) that wrote the report.
Kinda of wild that Dairy got its own section in that document as a proscribed thing to eat.
There are plenty of lactose intolerant people. These people can meet their nutritional needs without dairy. (For Calcium: via Sardines, leafy greens, Tofu, etc.)
I guess what I'm lamenting is the missed opportunity to highlight that many vegetables e.g. broccoli are an excellent protein source as well as other important nutrients. It gives you additional flexibility when meal planning. There's a common misconception (at least in my circles) that protein => animal protein which isn't always useful for planning a balanced meal.
Broccoli has 2.8g of protein per 100g. Beef has 26g per 100g, and chicken has 27g. If you're trying to get protein, broccoli isn't going to do much, and I think it's good that the government is being honest about that. A chart that listed broccoli as a major source of protein would be misleading. Broccoli is a good source of many nutrients, and the chart calls it out as such, but it is not an effective source of protein.
If you compare protein per kJ instead, broccoli has 0.021g protein per kJ whereas lean beef mince has 0.028g per kJ. Much more similar. Although of course you would need food that is higher density protein as well so you don't have too much volume to eat.
But that is a kind of silly way to compare. Broccoli isn't very filling _and_ it doesn't have very much protein in it. That doesn't change the fact that it lack protein.
The question is if I'm preparing a meal that I want to be filling, healthy, and energizing, how should I do it. Broccoli isn't a good answer to the protein part of that question.
Normalising by mass is a poor way to assess food's protein content since different foods have greatly different water contents. E.g. beef jerky has much higher protein per 100g than beef largely because it's dried (admittedly, probably also because they use leaner cuts)
> I guess what I'm lamenting is the missed opportunity to highlight that many vegetables e.g. broccoli are an excellent protein source as well as other important nutrients
I can see why you would expect something like that from this administration, but surprisingly the linked webpage seems to be based in fact.
Broccoli are not an excellent protein source from a dietary perspective.
It’s harder to get the target 1-1.6g protein per kg from vegetables, unless you’re consuming beans/pulses which are also high in carbohydrates. Broccoli is not a great protein source, an entire head will give you 10g at most – the average adult would have to eat a dozen+ per day.
Most protein rich vegetables are legumes and beyond this are also rich in complex carbs. Legumes are in the top 10 food allergies. Not to mention the amino profile of vegetable sources isn't very good.
You have to consume a very large amount of lentils to make up a healthy amount of protein per day. It’s something like 6 cans of chickpeas vs two chicken breasts per day. I believe you also don’t get a complete amino acids panel like you would with meat which is complete on its own.
> I believe you also don’t get a complete amino acids panel like you would with meat which is complete on its own.
You can challenge beliefs and do a modicum of research, which would easily disprove this false and frankly ridiculous notion, which defies even a rudimentary understanding of plant biology.
I mean I have. There are almost no vegetables that are considered amino acid complete though there are (well known) combinations like legumes (beans/lentils) + rice. But this goes back to my original point of needing a lot of beans to get your protein requirement for the day. In places like India where there are a lot of vegetarians, diary products are heavily used to make up the deficit.
you need to educate yourself better about "basic facts about biology"
they're called essential because humans cannot produce them internally, so we have to consume them (though you could in principle make the same assessment for other animal species, but that's less relevant, unless you're, I don't know, raising cows?)
plants don't eat, but produce organic molecules from raw ingredients (or almost raw, in case of nitrogen), and can produce all amino acids - but in different quantities, so maybe the (parts of) plants you eat don't have all the necessary amino acids.
Now they do produce all the essential amino acids, but in insufficient amounts? Weird how the narrative keeps changing in this thread. A serious lack of scientific knowledge is apparent from people who insist on eating animals. And as always, it is devoid of any backing evidence or credibility other than "trust me, bro, I lift".
From your tone and the fact that you're quoting things nobody in this thread has said, I'm not sure that you are actually interested in hearing any scientific argument. You certainly aren't trying to make one. But I'll try:
The quality of a protein is measured using PDCAAS (Protein digestibility corrected amino acid score). It's a score between 0 and 1 that measures the quality of a protein as a function of digestibility and how well it meets the human amino acid requirements.
It is indeed correct that both lentils and chickpeas (which the original comment you replied to was talking about) have a much lower PDCAAS value of around 0.70. Data on beef varies, but it is generally considered to be a complete protein with a PDCAAS score above 0.90.
Instead of accusing "people who insist on eating animals" of lacking scientific knowledge, it would have been much more helpful to point out that the highest quality proteins on the PDCAAS scale are almost universally vegetarian or vegan: eggs, milk, soy, and mycoprotein all have higher scores than beef, chicken, or pork.
I believe the person you’re responding to is a vegan (from other comments) so the “amino complete” alternative of eggs and dairy you’re suggesting don’t fit the bill of requirements for his arguments either which leaves soy. Mycoprotein has plenty of controversy around it regarding heavy metals and health issues from the fact that it’s highly processed. Soy has a lot of phytoestrogens so it’s not a great candidate to consume large amounts of.
Beef has ~3x more protein per gram than legumes. It is much more protein-dense than vegetables or legumes.
Similarly, it's a "complete" protein, whereas most vegetables and legumes are missing necessary amino acids.
The downside of beef isn't the "density" of nutrients: the downside is high saturated fat. Chicken breast, though, is similarly high in protein without the saturated fat downside.
> most vegetables and legumes are missing necessary amino acids
In practice, there's no evidence of amino acid deficiency in vegans/vegetarians except ones that restrict even further (potato diet, fruitarians, etc)
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6893534/
Besides the ever-popular soybean being a complete protein, if you have normal variety in your diet, it's just not something you have to worry about.
>In practice, there's no evidence of amino acid deficiency in vegans/vegetarians
That is not what your linked article says. It says there is not evidence of protein deficiency, and the deficiency of amino acids is overstated. Not that there is no deficiency.
And vegan/vegetarian health is really a 2nd order variable here. Vegans and vegetarians could have massive amino acid surpluses and it remains a fact that vegetable proteins lack useful amino acids that meat has. Maybe the vegetarians are eating lots of eggs. Maybe they are taking lots of supplements. Maybe they are actually eating meat despite calling themselves vegans and vegetarians. It doesn't matter. There really is no disputing the fact about the composition of meat/vegetable protein.
> a fact that vegetable proteins lack useful amino acids that meat has.
This isn't a problem since you only need nine essential amino acids and they are present in adequate quantity in various vegetables and shrooms. The others are synthesized by ones body.
Only if those vegetables or shrooms were grown in natural sunlight (no greenhouse plastic/glass involved) and in a soil with abundant minerals, macronutrients, and high brix value.
The fat is an excellent source of energy though and it's very hard to get fat by eating fat because it's essentially hormonally inert. I.e. eating fat doesn't precipitate insulin which is the hormone that enables body fat accumulation.
So the problem with steak isn't the steak itself it's the "steak dinner" where the meat comes with sides such as french fries and drinks such as beer.
> The downside of beef isn't the "density" of nutrients: the downside is high saturated fat.
There are other downsides to beef .. such as the batshit crazy use of ecosystems and resources required to produce it at industrial scale.
Got a (beef) cow roaming in your yard, somehow getting by on whatever grows out of the ground? Enjoy your steak! Generating 6x the calories via a water-intensive cover crop to feed the cow so you can eat it later? Just say no.
This is orthogonal to nutritious eating habits; I don't think the food pyramid should lie about nutrition due to ecological concerns. (I do think the food pyramid should be a little more concerned about saturated fat than it is, though — which is why I called out chicken as an alternative, and elsewhere also mentioned fish.)
Worth noting that like amino acids there are essential fatty acids as well, and most people have poor nutrition there... red meat isn't "only" saturated fat, but a fairly balanced fatty acid profile. You can have too much, but in moderate cuts it isn't too bad.
I usually suggest around 0.5g fat to 1g protein as a minimal, higher if keto/carnivore.
That's true, although fish has a better balance of essential fatty acids than red meat. Although, oddly enough, wagyu has a (much) better fatty acids profile than other types of beef, so you can justify the occasional wallet splurge on health grounds!
Beef and chicken does not cause cancer anymore than anything else does. It is an insane take that regular food causes cancer in any level that should be worrisome. Don't cite the studies where they grouped frozen pizza in the same category as beef.
Steak is actually an excellent source of protein (and fat, if you get the fattier steak as you should).
Just because vegetables, lentils or nuts contain protein it doesn't mean it's the same/equivalent to the protein in an animal product.
Meat is actually super easy for humans to digest and it has no downsides to it. All vegetables on the other side contain plenty of anti-nutrients such as folate and oxalates.
Everything in human body, skin, connective tissues, tendons, hair, nails, muscles is essentially built out of protein and collagen. Fats are essential for hormone function.
> Meat is actually super easy for humans to digest and it has no downsides to it.
In moderate amounts, sure. But frequently eating red meat (more than two or three servings a week) is terrible for you. There's "a clear link between high intake of red and processed meats and a higher risk for heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and premature death": https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/whats-the-bee...
Not to mention how high heat cooking of meat, which is common for a steak via frying, brings health risks from Advanced Glycation End products (AGEs).
AGEs are also present in vegetables and legumes, but certain meats like bacon contain unbelievable amounts relative to other foods. (Interestingly: Rice contains almost no AGE's.)
"We put a bunch of meat derived products with high amounts of artificial additives together with actual meat and then concluded that meat is the problem"
I really take issue with studies like this that put meat and meat products together.
Unprocessed meat is what humans what have been eating for hundreds of thousand of years.
Meat products are commercial new inventions and contain stuff like preservatives, volume expanders, flavor enhancers and coloring agents. They also typically contain added sugars, sodium, malto dextrin, corn syrup.
One can't seriously put these together and call them the same, make a study where participants might be eating SPAM and then conclude that "red meat is bad".
Given the choice between "Domino's vegetarian pizza", "IKEAs meatballs" and "steak that is fried,salted and peppered" which one do you think will be the healthiest option?
It's a good point, and maybe Broccoli isn't then as compelling as something like tofu, which contains nearly as much (and nearly as bio available) protein/calorie as lean steak.
I guess I'd challenge the 'no downsides' claim. Few people stick to super lean grass-fed cuts, and the picture on the site is even a ribeye steak :P
The protein density (g/kcal) of a ribeye steak is basically the same as tofu (I think like 14g/100kcal vs 11g/100kcal in tofu)
I know I'm moving the goal posts slightly (I admit I didn't know about bio availability, and see now that I have more to read up on e.g. Broccoli), but am learning as I discuss rather than arguing a fixed point.
Bioavailabilty is a bit of a non-issue. It's measured as if the food you are measuring is the only food you eat. So if it is slightly low on one amino acid, the "bioavailabilty" drops, but noone eats like that. Once combined with other foods, the total "bioavailabilty" tends to increase.
The bigger problem is nutritional density. I tried meeting the 1-1.5 g/kg protein level through a vegetarian whole grains diet and it's a lot of flipping food. Equivalent of like 3kg of chickpeas a day to make it.
It was definitely eye opening on the sort of ancient benefit of meat. It's really hard to reach your muscular potential without it.
An adult who weighs 75 kg, so is targeting about 75 grams of protein intake per day, would only need to eat 833 grams of cooked chickpeas (which are 9% protein by weight) to get there. That is indeed a lot of chickpeas! But a lot less than you claimed, and you probably shouldn't be getting all your protein from chickpeas anyway.
You're probably talking about dry weight. My can says 6g protein / 130 g. I'm about 100kg and to hit the 1.6 g protein/kg I need 160g of protein. 6g/130g * 3500 g is 161 g of protein.
- Canned, drained and rinsed: 7g protein / 100g [1]
- Boiled: 9g protein / 100g [2]
Not sure what explains the discrepancy (though the second number is much older), but both are considerably higher than what your can says. Sure you aren't reading a per-serving amount?
> How is it possible that beef, dairy, and chicken are front and center while Lentils, Tofu (or even just soy), Chickpeas, Nutritional Yeast, Broccoli, etc are all left off?
To quote famed businessman and philosopher Eugene Krabs: "Money."
Not the poster, but, usually what people are referring to is all the other stuff that comes along.
Per calorie beef and broccoli are actually surprisingly similar, but broccoli comes with fiber, calcium and vitamin C, while beef comes with saturated fat.
Of course, broccoli is not very calorie dense, so you would need to eat a lot.
More realistically, tofu, which has about as much protein per calorie (and almost as much per gram) as middling lean beef. But has half the saturated fat, more iron, more calcium, and fibre.
You just get more good stuff, and less bad stuff with veg.
Tofu being displeasurable is funny to me because it literally has no taste and texture by default. It becomes whatever you put it in or how you cook it. You want crunchy? You got it. Puree? Sure. Sweet? Fine. Salty? Spicy? Tangy? Easy.
People just don't want to actually put in the effort to prepare it.
My problem is that I just can't get it to take up any of the flavour. I can marinate it for days, and the marinade will still just be a superficial layer on top of a piece of tofu which, itself, always remains completely unfazed and tasteless.
It's not a problem for saucy dishes like a curry, but even experimenting with friends and borderline "molecular cuisine" techniques I have never once managed to flavour tofu itself :(
> How is it possible that beef, dairy, and chicken are front and center while Lentils, Tofu (or even just soy), Chickpeas, Nutritional Yeast, Broccoli, etc are all left off?
Possibly because those foods are culturally un-American or something silly like that
As a flexitarian, I've had to think quite a lot about how to get enough bioavailable protein while moderating my carb consumption and digestive upset due to beans, and to do so in a sustainable manner factoring in convenience and lack of leisure. I certainly won't recommend anything but lean meat and dairy as protein staples to people who aren't used to watching what they eat.
> Steak is a terrible source of protein (in terms of nutrient density).
At 23g/100g, lean beef has a very high protein/weight ratio. Similar to chicken and turkey breast and exceeded only by canned tuna and processed protein isolates like soy protein isolate, whey protein isolate, and wheat gluten. For comparison, protein content of firm tofu, lentils, and chickpeas is much lower, at 14g/100g, 9g/100g, and 8.5g/100g, respectively. They all contain a lot more carbs per 100g than lean beef.
Further, lean beef contains a full and balanced amino acid profile, which lentils, tofu, chickpeas, soy protein isolate, and wheat gluten does not. It's an excellent food. However there is evidence that charred red meat and red meat containing nitrites is associated with a slight increase in colorectal cancer, so people should be consuming minimally processed red meat where possible, as per the guidance.
> most/all of the most protein dense foods are vegetables/legumes
Are you abusing "dense" to mean calories over calories, rather than the expected calories over weight measure? Even a cursory search shows the latter to be untrue. The former is disingenuous, because despite "density", people do not eat kilograms of broccoli daily to hit minimum-viable protein targets.
I do regret mentioning Broccoli because it seems to have become a bit of a distraction from my original point, which was that getting enough protein from a varied diet actually isn't that hard once you start to notice how much protein is in certain common veg. I'm not totally sure I understand where the mentality that all your protein has to come from a single source in isolation comes from, but suspect representations like this pyramid are at least partly to blame.
Agree that g/kcal isn't perfect but g/g has its own corner cases like water content skewing things badly (e.g. dried spirulina is 57% protein by weight but you'd never eat more than like a gram in a serving). I never meant to suggest that people should be eating broccoli _in place of_ turkey, only that by _de-emphasising_ the protein content of many vegetables in favor of animal proteins, the graphic encourages meal planning that must always contain an animal protein. More insidiously, in my experience at least, it blurs the line between the nutrition content of different animal proteins ("I have my veg I just need 'a protein' now") which leads to more consumption of red meat regardless of quality.
The graphic that I wish someone would make is the 'periodic table of macro nutrients' that positions foods along multiple dimensions at once but I don't know how you would actually do it in just two dimensions.
Replying to my own comment because I've had some more time to look through the scientific foundation document. In particular, this was an illuminating section (and maybe hinting at where the 'war on protein' language comes from)
> The DGAs recommend a variety of animal source protein foods (ASPFs) and plant
source protein foods (PSPFs) to provide enough total protein to satisfy the minimum
requirements set at the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) of 0.8 g/kg body
weight for adults and to ensure the dietary patterns meet most nutrient needs [3, 4].
However, over the past 20 years, an extensive body of research has underscored the
unique and diverse metabolic roles of protein, and now there is compelling evidence
that consuming additional foods that provide protein at quantities above the RDA may
be a key dietary strategy to combat obesity in the U.S (while staying within calorie limits
by reducing nutrient-poor carbohydrate foods).
Instead of incorporating this approach, the past iterations of the DGAs have eroded
daily protein quantity by shifting protein recommendations to PSPFs, including beans,
peas, and lentils, while reducing and/or de-emphasizing intakes of ASPFs, including
meats, poultry, and eggs. The shift towards PSPFs was intended to reduce adiposity
and risks of chronic diseases but was primarily informed by epidemiological evidence on
The Scientific Foundation for the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025–2030: Appendices | 350
dietary patterns, even in some cases when experimental evidence from randomized
controlled trials (RCTs) was available to more specifically inform this recommendation.
Another key aspect that DGA committees have inadequately considered are the nutrient
consequences when shifting from ASPFs to PSPFs. ASPFs not only provide EAAs, they
also provide a substantial amount of highly bioavailable essential micronutrients that are
under-consumed. Encouraging Americans to move away from these foods may further
compromise the nutrient inadequacies already impacting many in the U.S., especially
our young people.
Compounding this is the recent evidence highlighting the fallacies of using the
unsubstantiated concept of protein ounce equivalents within food pattern (substitution)
modeling, leading to recommended reductions in daily protein intakes and protein
quality since ASPFs and PSPFs are not equivalent in terms of total protein or EAA
density. Given that 1) there is no Tolerable Upper Intake Level (UL) for dietary protein
established by the Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) and 2) consuming high quality
ASPFs above current recommendations has shown no negative health risks in high
quality RCTs, it’s unclear as to why previous DGAs encouraged shifts in protein intake
towards limiting high quality, nutrient dense ASPFs. It's essential to evaluate the
evidence to establish a healthy range of protein intake and to substantiate whether or
not limiting ASPFs is warranted and/or has unintended consequences.
An alternative approach that may be more strongly supported by the totality of evidence
is the replacement of refined grains with PSPFs like beans, peas, and lentils. Given
their nutrient dense profile (e.g., excellent source of fiber, complex carbohydrates, &
folate, etc.; good source of protein) nutrient dense PSPFs complement but do not
replace the nutrients provided in ASPFs (i.e., excellent source of protein, vit B12, zinc,
good source of heme iron, etc.). By including high quality, nutrient dense ASPFs as the
primary source of protein, followed by nutrient dense PSPFs as a replacement for
nutrient-poor refined grains, a higher-protein, lower-carbohydrate dietary pattern can be
achieved which likely improves nutrient adequacy, weight management, and overall
health. -- https://cdn.realfood.gov/Scientific%20Report%20Appendices.pd... Appendix 4.9
No vegetable is as protein dense as actual meat in its natural form.
Ruminant meat is absolutely one of the best bioavailable forms of a mostly complete amino acid profile, though eggs and dairy is more complete with differing ratios depending on form/feed.
As to lentils, tofu, chickpeas etc. They're fine for most people in moderation, but they are also relatively inflammatory and plenty of people have digestive issues and allergies to legumes (I do), soy is one of the top 10 allergens that people face. While almost nobody is allergic to ruminant meat.
I'm pleasantly surprised, this is actually really good. The reason I'm surprised is because of how corrupt the creation of the previous food pyramid was (the sugar industry likely paid to downplay the danger of sugar[1])
I find when it comes to health advice, generally government sources can't be trusted because there's too much special interests and money involved. You really have to do your own research.
It's amusing how outraged people were when Michelle Obama did her Let's Move campaign focused on eating healthy and exercise and now people are pretending it's all new.
(There was also a version before that, in 2005. The "MyPyramid." That one emphasized exercise by having a person walking up a revised version of the pyramid. Though it had a whole giant category for "milk," admittedly as a knock against it. I'll grant today's did a good job in de-emphasizing dairy compared to 2005 and 2011.)
The people who got offended at the 2011 campaign are not the same people who are offended at this 2025 campaign. In the united states, if you do anything, someone, somewhere, will be offended. That's kind of our whole shtick.
I haven't thought of a word for it yet, but it has something to do with how many people participate in the discourse now. The numbers are large enough that someone somewhere will always have some opinion. Every time.
> It's amusing how outraged people were when Michelle Obama did her Let's Move campaign focused on eating healthy and exercise and now people are pretending it's all new.
It's the same people who got offended because Obama asked for spicy mustard because they thought that was too fancy, but still actively voted for the guy who actively plates everything with gold so as to maximize how tacky everything looks.
They've never been internally consistent and I'm not entirely convinced that they have any principles outside of "own the libs".
But what is this administration actually doing to change American diets? It's going to take a little more than throwing up a marketing landing page with a well produced video and nice photos.
You need to read the news, man. The landing page is just a press release. This is a summary of government mandated institutional changes to how food is selected and distributed.
This will actually change how millions eat. It is good news.
The biggest issue with sugar is that it makes stuff taste better which leads to overeating.
Incidentally it’s also the only downside of glutamate, it just makes stuff taste so good you’ll eat much more than your appetite would guide you to
My personal anecdotal experience is that once you make a conscious effort to avoid added sugars, your taste buds eventually recalibrate over the course of a few months and you end up perceiving stuff with added sugar as way too sweet.
It‘s not just the better taste that causes the overeating. Sugar and refined carbs cause blood glucose levels to spike, giving you a surge of energy. That spike is very short-lived, resulting in a sharp drop that then causes cravings for more refined carbs/sugar. This blood glucose rollercoaster can cause all kinds of bad effects like mood swings and brain fog.
The problem about refined carbs is that they never truly satiate your hunger. Once you add them to a meal, you get into the loop of chasing the glucose high which is horrible for your body and mind.
The other downsides of both sugar and in particular glutamate are that you'll find other foods less sweet or having less depth of flavor (umami), so you'll be more likely to go for the processed options.
Unfortunately it's pay-walled so I can't read it, I can only react to the headline. But yes, of course with "do your own research" it's "not that simple", but any student of history should know that you should have a very healthy skepticism of any official or mainstream source. For some reason we think in modernity that we've gotten everything right, and it's only in the past that the official explanations were wrong. My money is on the experts being wrong about a lot of things in this era too.
The good are things we've known for a while. Most of them result in unintended decrease in calories consumed and resulting weight/fat loss.
- More protein (than the prior RDA of 0.39g/lb) can lead to inadvertent caloric restriction and weight loss, and obesity is driving a large number of negative health outcomes. Also improves lean mass (muscle) retention during weight loss.
- Processed foods have lower satiety per calorie, and hence can lead to the same outcomes described above.
- Most people can benefit from eating more fruit and veggies. (Lots of people who change to vegetarian inadvertently eat significantly fewer calories because the food is not calorie dense)
The one glaring part I have a hard time reconciling is:
- This new Real Food guide seems like it's going to increase people's saturated fat intake, which is not good. DASH/Mediterranean diet seems to be a better model than both the prior and new pyramids.
I don't think it's even about low carb vs. high protein to begin with. Many countries and regions in the world are fine with a high-carb diet, and people there live long, healthy lives.
Americans eat so much processed food simply because it is much cheaper than fresh food. Processed food is made to get consumers addicted (through convenience, taste, etc.) and encourage them to consume much more. Fresh food is almost the opposite.
I grew up in a country where freshly made food is actually cheaper than processed food, even to this day. People who stick to a traditional diet are mostly thin, while those who stick to a processed food diet gain a lot of weight.
Yes, but look at the comments. Americans are obsessed with meat. They actively believe that mostly meat diets are somehow much more healthy than mostly carb and vegetable diets.
None of them want to eat only grains and vegetables, and meat is both the most expensive food and also the most damaging to the environment, which I guess is a second thing Americans seem not to care about.
Something like 15% of the Americans I know are vegetarian or vegan. Though you've characterized the others well.
I think we need more education around glycemic index. Protein and fats burn slowly enough that they're not going to spike your blood sugar. Many Americans think that they're the only nutrients with that property.
You're absolutely right but Americans don't consider rice + legumes (the standard international poverty meal) to be a "real meal" like the rest of the world.
In general the American diet is very meat-based. Once you hold meat as constant, you realize that fast-food or ultraprocessed food are the cheapest way to get a meat-based meal. E.g. McDonald's is probably the cheapest way to buy a hot meal containing beef (and it used to be even cheaper, you could add fries+coke for just 50c in the past). A lot of poor Americans eat hotdog sausages, microwave meals etc just to get some kind of meat even if it's low quality.
> fast-food or ultraprocessed food are the cheapest way to get a meat-based meal
Are you sure? Let's take the example of the McDonald's Big Mac which is $6.72 [0]
The between the 2 patties, the sandwich contains 25g of protein (not grass fed beef) per sandwich. It's fair to assume the majority of the cost of the ingredients of a burger is the meat. The rest is pretty cheap because you only need a small quantity of it to complete the meal.
Here are prices of Costco grass fed beef patties: [1]
15 patties for $36.31
Each patty contains 26 grams of protein, which is more protein than both patties of the Big Mac combined.
cost per patty = $36.31/15 = $2.42
cost of Big Mac = $6.72
That doesn't even come close to the majority of the cost of the Big Mac. I could do a full analysis of each ingredient, but I think it's clear from this data that fast food is not significantly cheaper, especially considering that the Costco patties are higher quality.
Edit:
formatting, and also burgers are super fast and easy to cook at home.
It's not just the price of the food, it's the time cost of going to the store, preparing the ingredients, cooking, washing dishes... You are looking at the issue through a myopic lens.
You are assuming access to a grocery store. Disproportionately poor people live in food deserts and have to rely on dollar stores and other things where fruit and vegetables are expensive.
Also, if you are busy single person, basically anything not shelf stable is expensive because you have to buy it in high quantities and it will go to waste if you are not skilled at storage. I, a mature adult, know how to store things, but as a younger person things went to rot a lot from inexperience.
Then there is prep. I spent literally all day on sunday just preparing food for the week. It's about 10-12 hours. That's what 2 hours a day to cook during the week. I have lied to myself and said, "oh, I'll cook something" and then eaten out all day from being busy or being exhausted. To save money stuff I could jam into the microwave was cheaper.
This is how you get there. I cook from fresh vegetables all the time now, but I have the time and energy for it. That just wasn't true at all when I was younger.
> an estimated 13.5 million people in the United States have low access to a supermarket or large grocery store [0]
That's 4% of the population. Food deserts explain some of it but not the majority
The rest yeah I absolutely agree with. People are stressed and time deficient, don't have food storage and prep skills
Maybe in a roundabout way it just comes back to money? If you need to work or study too much and don't feel you have the time to cook, you'll get the easiest options you know
Part of it can be overcome with strategy. I spend 15 minutes a day on food prep and couldnt imagine how I'd make my diet healthier. I'm sure what you make is much more elaborate though haha
> I don't understand how people come to this conclusion
Then maybe you shouldn't speak on it until you understand how they came to this conclusion. Knowing you have opinions based on ignorance and refusing to change isn't a good way to live.
When I was visiting the US I was shocked how much more expensive “real” food is. Here I am spending more if I eat out or processed food versus cooking my own food at home.
In the US it was basically the inverse, didn’t make any sense to me.
(N=1 and 10 year old experience, but it seems to have only gotten more extreme since)
I don't see this at all. Staple foods are cheap and abundant. Fruits and vegetables don't cost much at all. Some animal proteins can get a bit pricy (beef mostly) but chicken and pork aren't that expensive. Eggs are like $2 a dozen.
I love my meat but if I switched to a vegetarian diet it would be trivial to make varied, delicious meals at $1.50-$2 a portion.
Where? It's $4 for a dozen eggs where I am and I think that's pretty cheap. It's $5 for a bag of shitty apples. And then another $5 for a bag of oranges, so my kid can have fruit for the week. I cook from nothing but fresh and my kid gets one bag of chips or cookies a week. I buy 2lbs of meat for us both. I still spend over 100 dollars.
I guess we could have beans and rice every day, but I don't think it's a lot to give my kid a varied diet based on what's in season. Out of season is awful and that's how I ended up spending $15 on berries my kid wanted.
When people talk about these cheap meals, I wonder if they just expect everyone to eat the same thing every day at the lowest quality. I can go to a budget grocery store and get $3 eggs. That's true, but I feel like the local national chain should ve a good enough yard stick.
I bought 12 eggs from trader joe's yesterday for $2, organics were $5
I get 18 eggs from another grocery store for about $5 and kroger has them really cheap too. Even Whole Foods has 18 for $5-ish in one brand and much more $$ in another.
Publix is the egg-gouger around me (and just overpriced in general)
IMHO the same cheap whole food meals are healthier than a variety of $2 frozen dinners.
You can hit a middle-ground with some frozen stuff to save a little time and money a few days per week too.
I do most of my grocery shopping at Target. In my large Midwestern city 12 large eggs are $2. A 3 lb bag of apples is $4. A 3 lb bag of oranges is $4.29.
>When people talk about these cheap meals, I wonder if they just expect everyone to eat the same thing every day at the lowest quality.
Eating cheap doesn't have to mean eating the same shit meal every day. I like to have a framework to work from where I have some structure but can vary it a lot based on what I want to eat. Rice+vegetable(s)+protein has endless variations. One week I might do a taco style rice bowl. The next maybe I do an Asian bowl. Stews are also great for this. By varying the ingredients a bit and using different spices I can get stews with very different flavor profiles that taste great.
While the over-arc of this message is good (avoid packaged and processed food) I personally don’t like the advice that these are not top tier foods: non-GMO organic whole wheat (i.e., not soaked with pesticides), brown rice, and other pesticide-free whole grains —- all in moderation.
I also don’t like the emphasis on meat protein. Small amounts of meat protein a few times a week are definitely healthy for most people, but organic (not soaked in pesticides) beans, lentils, etc. are almost certainly a healthy way to consume extra protein.
I sense the ugly hand of the meat industry in realfood.gov. I think if more people understood how (especially) chickens and pigs are tortured in meat production, it would help people who are addicted to excess meat cut back on their consumption to just what they need for good health.
EDIT: the documentary movie The Game Changers (2018) is an excellent source of information. The scenes interviewing huge muscular vegetarian NFL football players really put the lie to the ‘must have meat’ addicts. That said, I still think small amounts of meat protein are very healthy for most people.
I totally agree on all three accounts: unprocessed foods are great, organic wheats are good, and the concerning focus on abundance of red meat. I think we are going through a fad of "we need to gobble down as much protein as we can". I agree it's reasonable we need more, and especially older adults at risk of falling. I am concerned that there are so many junior residents that I work with that are throwing back protein shakes because they are "optimizing their macros". So many of these protein powders have added sugar and are contaminated with heavy metals! I will commend the guidelines for supporting lentils, beans and other pulses.
I see how the article is framed, but I see a lot of good things in that timeline:
MAHA Commission assessing health risks from food ingredients and chemicals and developing a strategy to combat childhood chronic disease
Closing the GRAS loophole
Phasing out synthetic food dyes
$235 million specifically aimed at improving nutrition, controlling food additives and addressing food safety
$15 million specifically for modernizing infant formula oversight
$7 million to support critical laboratory operations
Look, we could spend a fraction of what we do, but then there would be people who get things for free or even fraudulently. You can see just how bad that would be from an American mindset.
What they see as necessary to combat childhood chronic disease is not necessarily what most scientists would say is necessary to combat childhood chronic disease, and might even be detrimental. Also if the new dietary recommendations are any clue, what they see as "improving nutrition" might be questionable.
> $235 million specifically aimed at improving nutrition, controlling food additives and addressing food safety
Musk’s disastrous months with the admin defunded and ended a program bringing local farmers’ produce et al to public schools around my state so I’m a little bitter seeing this one.
You asking how reductions in protections related to processed food (that already allow ultra processed foods) will affect safety when the new advice is to eat "real food" and seems to emphasize items that are pretty easy to confirm visually?
(I mean besides the fact that the FDA came into existence due to things like selling watered down white paint as "milk")
I've seen ultra-processed food mentioned in other countries as well. It's a buzzword with no meaning.
Pasteurization saves lives. Flash-frozen foods retain more nutrition in transit, while freezing seafood kills parasites. And even the best bread and butter are as processed as food can get.
I'm reading the "chemical additives" list and it's a mix of obviously harmful things with known safe things added in trace concentrations - there's no intellectual rigor and a lot of fearmomgering.
When I hear "ultra-processed," here's what comes to mind:
- little Debbie snack cakes
- cereals
- white breads
- hot dogs
- chips
- pizza rolls
- Velveeta
- pop tarts
So I guess you're right, it has no meaning. But you're way off, I don't think anyone is talking about frozen raw fish as "ultra processed", or pasteurized milk.
Looking at the ingredients list on Wonderbread white bread, could you make that at home?
You can make bread with salt, flour, yeast, and water. Most breads in the grocery store, however, have considerably more ingredients, which are more in the purpose of treating the foodstuff as an industrial product rather than for nutritional purposes.
(That's not automatically bad btw. The amount of ultraprocessed food you can eat is actually probably quite a lot in relative terms before it starts causing health problems --- the problem is when it becomes 70-80% of your diet.)
He's talking about "wonder bread" and other factory breads that have had much of their nutrients stripped and some put back, to the detriment of their absorption. Some also are concerned with artificially included preservatives and the unknown unknowns of putting them in places (even if there's a common natural source in another food).
Homemade bread is certainly not ultraprocessed (especially if made with unbleached flour or even better, whole wheat flour), but factory bread most certainly is considered ultraprocessed.
Yes and no. It's not a good word, but it has generally been defined in a way that wouldn't include any of the steps you mentioned.
One common description is that it includes lots of ingredients you wouldn't find in your kitchen.
It sometimes also includes ingredients that have been turned into extremely fine powder, and other very heavy industrial processing. My way of thinking of this is: adults shouldn't eat baby food. Some fast food essentially becomes way to easy to absorb.
I think this interview had a really good description about the problems of the "ultra-processed" label.
Even the original margarine (before the invention of hydrogenation) is more processed than the best bread and butter.
To quote from Ultra-Processed People:
Mège-Mouriès took cheap solid fat from a cow (suet), rendered it (heated it up with some water), digested it with some enzymes from a sheep stomach to break down the cellular tissue holding the fat together, then it was sieved, allowed to set, extruded from between two plates, bleached with acid, washed with water,warmed, and finally mixed with bicarb, milk protein, cow-udder tissue and annatto (a yellow food colouring derived from seeds of the achiote tree). The result was a spreadable, plausible butter substitute.
The "scientific foundation" PDF does disclose several financial relationships with the National Cattlemen's Beef Association and other cow-related lobbyists.
High protein, nutrient dense. Definitely want to get grass-fed or pasture raised though. Shouldn't eat it all the time because it has a high calorie content, but steak isn't bad. They're probably showing a steak to indicate that eating meat is good, not just steak in general. Keto and carnivore diets have been shown to be pretty good for people with inflammatory conditions.
> Keto and carnivore diets have been shown to be pretty good for people with inflammatory conditions
No. The scientific evidence of a carnivore diet reducing inflammation is pretty weak. The scientific evidence of a vegan diet reducing inflammation is way stronger.
Worth noting that ruminants have less variance between "good diets" and "bad diets" for the animals than other animal protein sources. IE: you're better off with a grain fed steak than an unnaturally fed non-ruminant animal.
As to the calories, yes calories count, but the fact that it is calorie dense doesn't necessarily mean you should avoid it so much as be aware if you are mixing sources and having excessive meals. I know a lot of people on carnivore diets for inflammatory and diabetic control and the total calorie intake is less of an issue in those cases. Even with a pound of steak and a dozen eggs a day, weight loss is still happening for overweight diabetics on carnivore diets.
Just meat is very sating and impossible for most people to overeat in practice... at least from my own experience and exposure. The relative mono diet also helps with this.
Yeah, I agree, I'm not really a calorie counter. (I tend to get irritated by the "a calorie is a calorie" folk because nutrient quality is the most important thing). It's occasionally worth paying attention to calories with some foods though, like bacon or whatnot because it's very easy to eat a small volume but a lot of calories.
My advice in the various keto-carnivore and diabetic groups I'm in is to concentrate on getting used to the diet first and only start counting calories after a prolonged (months long) stall or gaining weight for multiple weeks.
It's too easy to obsess, and I've experienced times where I'll stall when not eating enough more than eating too much when I'm eating clean. I have digestive issues from Trulicity/Ozempic and have a hard time eating enough, and my metabolism is highly dysfunctional... If I eat 1500 calories a day, about my natural hunger level at this point, I won't lose anything, but if I eat closer to 3000-3400/day, I will lose weight. It seems counter-intuitive but it's true.
> Definitely want to get grass-fed or pasture raised though.
Yeah I mean if you're going to maximize your impact just go all out right. Eating beef, particularly in the US, is one of the worst actions you can take environmentally speaking.
More people need to understand how incredibly destructive cattle ranching has been around the world. In the US in particular pretty much all BLM and Forest Service land that isn't protected as wilderness or permitted for extraction (oil/forestry/etc) is used for ranching. That is an enormous area that has literally been turned to cow shit. Even where the cattle don't eat all vegetation in sight they trample habitat and entirely change the ecology of the area.
Source: I spent three years traveling around the western US from 2019-2022 and camped almost exclusively on public lands during that time. The number of beautiful places I've seen completely covered in cow shit is utterly appalling. Why should we let agribusiness use OUR land this way? It is truly such a waste.
Depends if it's eye of round or rib eye. I think the usual steak emoji is a porter house. All 3 of them have very different protein/fat ratios (and thus calories)
If Lysenko Jr wants us all to eat steaks, he should get to work on either eliminating ticks, or creating a cure for alphagal (alpha galactose) allergy transmitted by many ticks. I've had to stop eating beef (my wife gives me a little bite of her steak once in awhile), along with lamb and pork (pork seems to be less of a problem than beef, but I still have to eat it in moderation).
In case you're not familiar with this allergy, it doesn't behave like other food allergies: instead of getting instant symptoms, it hits you hours later, making it hard to figure out why you suddenly have hives---unless you already know about alpha gal.
That's rough... I have issues when I eat legumes and wheat... I still like pasta and pretty much had peanut butter every day of my life up to a few years ago. When I manage to stick to a meat centered diet I do better... but it's easy to get off track in social circles.
>he should get to work on either eliminating ticks, or creating a cure for alphagal
Or he should just lobby to make high quality, lean, grass-fed steaks cheaper so everyone who wants to consume them can consume them. It's not currently cheap.
"In over 24,000 participants from the NHANES study, high saturated fatty acid intake was associated with an 8% increase in all cause mortality risk. A meta-analysis with over 1,100,000 total participants showed that high intake of saturated fats was also correlated to a 10% increase in coronary heart disease mortality risk"
(https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.118.31403...)
(there is an argument for why this shouldn't apply to grass-fed meat but that is an extremely small minority of meat sold)
that is an impossible standard to apply to diet-based research which is incredibly expensive to otherwise study (e.g, you need a metabolic ward and at that point you'd complain about small N).
We know saturated fat increases LDL, we know LDL contributes to CVD. This is still an area of active research and there are small populations of people that don't accept the consensus but it is still very much best-practice keep your LDL low.
I visited a heart doctor at Duke research medical center a few years back. His comments then were that dairy products were the most inflammatory foods for humans and a major contributor to heart disease by gunking up our bloodstreams.
Saturated fats are good because they're more stable than poly-unsaturated fats for instance.
If you do consume a seed oil (which you really shouldn't -- there's no benefit), you should get a cold-pressed one. But that would be more expensive, so if you're paying more you might as well just get something good like avacado oil or coconut oil.
Saturated fat is OK in moderate amounts, but if you eat too much, it drives up your cholesterol because your body converts saturated fat into cholesterol[1][2].
The issue I have with this new food pyramid is the guidance ignores the danger of saturated fat. It lists "meats" and "full-fat dairy" among sources of "healthy fats", and that's just not true. In the picture that shows sources of protein/fat, 11 out of 13 of the items are animal-based fats. With a giant ribeye steak, cheese, butter, and whole milk specifically (not just milk), they're simply not giving an accurate picture of healthy fat sources.
I personally don't think seed oils are bad, but even if they were, it does not follow that saturated fat is good. The evidence shows otherwise, for one thing, plus it's not like seed oils and saturated fat are the only two kinds of fat. There are plenty of unsaturated fats which aren't seed oils.
The point the Cleveland Clinic page makes is that seed oils tend to be what's used in ultra-processed foods, and those are bad for you. So if you avoid seed oils, you wind up avoiding the bad things as a second order effect.
Aside from that it's just hand-wavey "they use chemicals to make it! It doesn't have nutrients beyond the fat!". There's nothing to indicate that using sunflower or peanut oil is any worse for you than using walnut oil.
The connection between omega-6 fats and inflammation is a whole lot more tenuous than the link between ultra-processed foods and inflammation.
Just Google "seed oils health" and look at the reputable results (Cleveland Clinic, various universities, Mayo Clinic, etc), and you'll see opinions across the board. Some say "Bad". Some say "Not bad". Some say "Unsure".
Jury is still out on this one.
And I think lumping all seed oils into one category isn't helping. Maybe canola oil is OK and sesame oil is not. Or vice versa.
I think it's generally fair to lump them together, because the types of fats you get in them are similar.
The history of cotton seed oil is interesting. After reading that, I would challenge people to think if that's really something they'd want in their body. Other than cost, I see no downside to avoiding seed oils and a lot of upside: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottonseed_oil#Economic_histor...
Looking at the article, I'm not sure I see the problem.
> Other than cost, I see no downside to avoiding seed oils and a lot of upside
The taste of food in certain recipes (that don't involve cooking the oil) varies widely with the oil used. In some recipes, canola oil tastes better than olive oil (by a significant margin - no one would eat it with olive oil).
Cost was never a factor for me (even as a student). Oil is amongst the least expensive things in the food I cook.
I mean, what you want to put in your body is up to you, but an industrial byproduct that involves a lot of chemistry seems like something I'm not a fan of. Also if you go past the history a bit: "The FDA released its final determination that Partially Hydrogenated Oils (PHOs), which include partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil, are not Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) in 2015."
Olive oil definitely has a flavor, but other oils are pretty neutral (I cook with avacado oil because of the high smoke point and I don't notice it really effecting anything). Also you have to keep in mind that those seed oils have a neutral flavor because they've been through a deodorizing chemical process, otherwise they'd taste/smell rancid.
Exactly this. Rapeseed oil is obviously a seed oil. You can have a chemically extracted version or a cold-pressed version. "Seed oil is bad for you" is a typical simplistic Twitter/Reddit conspiracy theory.
This is a great example of how harming your own credibility can damage an otherwise correct and uncontroversial message. RFK Jr. has surrounded himself in controversy, and that controversy is really dominating a lot of this conversation and drowning out the message. Given how he's acted, I don't blame anyone for being skeptical of him, even if this particular food pyramid seems to be a good move that would itself be uncontroversial if provided by a different messenger.
True, but, I think this is also an important lesson in considering the arguments not just a source. Nobody is ever 100% right or 100% wrong, and just leaning on arguments of authority is lazy thinking.
Inflammation is a real thing you can measure in the body, you know. (C Reactive Protein for instance). It's behind a lot of diseases.
The reason WHY it's "always" inflammation is because the standard american diet CREATES a lot of inflammation. You'll probably have to worry about hearing that buzzword a lot less if people ate better..
Steak’s not great for you, but in moderation is probably a better source of calories than refined grains, which should be treated more or less the same as candy.
I wish we could move past the "highly processed food" thing.
You can engineer healthy food. The problems isn't the processing. Its that most people who are engineering food do not have "healthy" among the goals.
We're conflating "designed" with "designed recklessly".
It matters because a lot of people can't afford the diet suggested here. The messaging needs to distinguish between adding protein powder because there's no meat available, and living on Cheetos because there's no meat available, and "highly processed" fails to do that.
The reason we're conflating them is because there is a strong correlation between "highly processed food" and "designed recklessly". If you look at Carlos Monteiro (The pioneer in this domain) he operationalized it with the NOVA metric. NOVA 4 being the closest to what you're talking about:
"Industrially manufactured food products made up of several ingredients (formulations) including sugar, oils, fats and salt (generally in combination and in higher amounts than in processed foods) and food substances of no or rare culinary use (such as high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, modified starches and protein isolates)..." [1]
Sure, but these companies mostly want to engineer the cheapest shit they can legally sell. It's also valid from regular food, it's a race to the bottom, and that's why veggies/fruit are less and less nutritious over the years
The latest conclusion seems to be that the deadly combo is ultra processed foods with high calorie density. That’s what causes us to overeat garbage. Ultra processed low calorie foods are often still junk, but not what is killing us.
Few ingredients is code for white people’s ideas of food.
Example: Curry has and average of 10-15 ingredients. Malaysian 15-20. Thai: 15–20. China: 10–16. Indonesia: 20–25. Mexican Moles 20-30. Etc…..
note: I expect this is unintentional. The authors of the new recommendations think more ingredients = processed. But it still ends up being an accidental judgement against other cultures.
It's an interesting point. I would suggest the its kinda recursive.
Good food ingredients are those which are or composed of Good food ingredients.
We can intuitively realize that A salad composed of Tomatoes, lettuce, radish, kale, cucumber, figs etc is at least as good as just eating Tomatoes. But each of those ingredients is a simple good food. IMO the issue is fractionation and concentration (and is weighted by dose). Corn on the cob, good. Corn syrup, bad.
Lots of the traditional dishes from the places you mentioned would be using very whole foods. Like a traditional, non industrial, mole is pretty much a gravy/sauce of very nutrition whole foods. But it's notable there is a highly processed equivalent in a jar.
Michael Pollan interestingly noted that when people cook food for themselves more or less from scratch they usually default to high quality whole foods because we often cannot make the low quality ultra-processed food in our own homes, they can only be made with industrial/factory equipment.
As someone with psoriotic arthritis, this is just my diet (plus avoiding gluten) and honestly following it has made me feel alot better even aside from preventing the psoriosis
Good initiative from the government, i wouldnt have expected them to do something that messes with junk food corporations profits like this
Yeah, I was expecting read something that made me mad, but this is basically how I’ve eaten my whole life. I’ve never subscribed to any special diet, but I like whole milk, I like eating meat and veggies, I don’t enjoy sliced bread, and I avoid sugary things. I walk a lot every day. Probably thanks to genetics, but I’ve been thin my whole life and the only chronic issues I’ve had tend to be muscle-tendon things from bad posture while sitting at the computer, or overdoing it when I get into a hobby like bouldering. Near 40 and I hope I can keep my health and be active well into my 70s at least.
I am not sure it messes with their profits at all.
For comparison think about smoking. Imagine a government 70s ad that says "As a nation we are now not smoking and showed people enjoying themselves without a cigatette", but in addition cigatettes carry on being sold anyway. The addiction wins.
This is the first food recommendation from the government that makes sense.
6-11 servings of grains, 3-5 veges, 2-4 fruit, 2-3 dairy, 2-3 protein (all sources), minimal fat was absurd and bad. Protein is until you hit your needed macros. Fats are as needed. Processed grains are basically empty calories. a cup or two of whole grains is all you really need and thats it.
Those prior recommendations you supplied are worse than the current ones.
Added Sugar: it says <50grams when its clear that NO added sugar is best as the new guidelines suggest.
Fat: it says to choose low fat cuts 95% and low fat milk. There is no basis for these options. you are just reducing the nutrients from fat. You should just drink/eat less of the fatty food if it contains fat, not choose a processed version that removes part of it.
Protein: The protein section clearly skews towards plant based proteins which are fine but for the majority of people animal proteins are going to be healthier and easier to eat enough of.
The protein amounts to around 35-60 grams of protein depending on the sources/amounts listed which is not ideal for a properly functioning human
Sodium: It says in multiple places to lower sodium but the studies on sodium were correlative not causative. Meaning there is no basis for a low sodium diet unless you have other health conditions.
So no they are not lying to you and these new guidelines are 100% evidence based given the new evidence that we have had for the last 30 years.
> Added Sugar: it says <50grams when its clear that NO added sugar is best as the new guidelines suggest.
False. Science studies show that up to 50 grams has little effect on your health.
>Fat: it says to choose low fat cuts 95% and low fat milk. There is no basis for these options. you are just reducing the nutrients from fat. You should just drink/eat less of the fatty food if it contains fat, not choose a processed version that removes part of it.
False, it says to choose lean protein and explicitly calls out to avoid processed meat. A lean cut of meat is not "processed" it comes that way.
> Protein: The protein section clearly skews towards plant based proteins which are fine but for the majority of people animal proteins are going to be healthier and easier to eat enough of. The protein amounts to around 35-60 grams of protein depending on the sources/amounts listed which is not ideal for a properly functioning human
False, red meat has been show to be associated with increased cardiovascular disease.
While the risk of fat and salt is likely overblown, overall the previous guidelines were pretty good. These new ones don't call out the dangers of things like red meat.
Those science studies are a load of bull if they say added sugar up to 50 GRAMS has no effect on your health. Your gut develops a craving for it like no other and your insulin spikes much harder when you intake that much on daily basis. When you're off sugar for a while, you notice how those "compulsions" you have during groceries is just due to your gut yearning for some sugar. Now fruits and natural sugar are a lot better, but even them I wouldn't consume excessively if you are in the business of high focus -work.
Dairy (the milk of another mammal's baby) only "makes sense" as a result of deep conditioning that it is normal, necessary and natural. Time to wake up from this lullaby.
> Higher intakes of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, unsaturated fats, nuts, legumes and low-fat dairy products were linked to greater odds of healthy aging, whereas higher intakes of trans fats, sodium, sugary beverages and red or processed meats (or both) were inversely associated.
Wow thank god it's my fault im sick and i can make personal choices to stop chronic conditions! I was worried it might have something to do with material conditions i live in but also can not control, or worse that i might require medicine! Relatedly its a great thing that "real food" access isn't class-based.
Really strange comment. You're offended by the implication that what we eat may impact our health?
Regarding the class comment, sure a access to some food is class based, but pretty much all westerners can afford basic "real food". I know because I've lived on minimum wage and could buy eggs, rice, beans, chicken thigh, etc.
Not the person you're responding to, but the thing that frustrates me isn't that they're saying to eat healthy, but that they're acting like that's the only thing we need to change, while actively deregulating pretty much everything else that also affects health.
Yes, obviously what we eat affects our health, I don't think that's ever been in dispute by any significant number of people (despite what the inbreds who love RFK Jr. seem to think), but part of the frustration is that they're acting that that can solely explain all chronic illnesses, ignoring things like air pollution (which they are actively deregulating).
Oh, also, RFK Jr. telling people to eat at Five Guys because they fry their fries in beef tallow is really dumb and is likely to lead to worse health outcomes.
> We are ending the war on protein. Every meal must prioritize high-quality, nutrient-dense protein from both animal and plant sources, paired with healthy fats from whole foods such as eggs, seafood, meats, full-fat dairy, nuts, seeds, olives, and avocados.
This is some seriously radical stuff, if you take it literally. Every single meal you eat "must" prioritize protein? Why? Who is lacking protein in America?
The "protein" part of the "new" pyramid does not mention legumes (beans, peas, chickpeas, lentils, lupins...) despite them being a highly efficient source of proteins.
It’s not the healthiest food, but it’s a much weaker risk factor than diets high in processed foods (including processed meats), refined carbs, added sugar, and excess salt.
For adults (25–64), the biggest diet-linked contributors to cardiometabolic death were sugar-sweetened beverages and processed meats. [1]
also form the paper:
High sodium intake → ~66,000 deaths (9.5%)
Low nuts & seeds intake → ~59,000 deaths (8.5%)
High processed meat intake → ~57,000 deaths (8.2%)
Agreed, much of the angst towards "meat" or "red meat" really ought to be stated as carcinogenic nitrosamines . When you cook nitrate rich red meat at high temperatures you get nitrosamines (less when you use herbs like rosemary) ...
Meat has it's own internal ranking: Fish, boneless skinless chicken, low fat red meat cuts, high fat red meat, processed/preserved red meats (like sausage, bacon, sandwich meat etc) ... We should shift left in our meat consumption.
As someone who eats whole fruits and vegetables, some meat and fish, etc. already, I would like to feel more confident in the following:
- there is no way that any of the fish I am eating was from polluted water or contains any harmful chemicals.
- there is no way that any of the meat I am eating was sick, raised in horrible conditions, had cancer, had significant wounds or puss-producing sores, was fed the feces of other animals, was fed chemicals or hormones, etc.
- there is no way that any of the vegetables I am eating were watered with dirty water or fertilized or exposed to pesticides that are not 100% safe.
I appreciate the nod to whole milk, which has been repeatedly shown to be associated with _lower_ obesity in children. E.g. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31851302/, many other studies.
This is for children and adolescents, which have different needs than the average adult. It's also just a meta analysis of literature with zero RCTs and a suggestive correlation. Unfortunately, these new guidelines don't seem even nearly detailed enough to cover these kinds of differences. The usual guidelines are well over 150 pages.
This is a meta-analysis of 28 studies. "Of 5862 reports identified by the search, 28 met the inclusion criteria: 20 were cross-sectional and 8 were prospective cohort."
Weird branding and culture war stuff aside, this is probably the least objectionable thing this health administration has done.
That said, I don't know if this would actually move the needle much. The Japanese diet includes so much more processed foods and less protein and they still live longer, healthier lives. I think the ultimate factors are still portion sizes, environment, activity, and genetics.
It's just all macho nonsense to make them think they're going to turn everyone into navy seals or something, the same reason they install gyms and pull up bars at airports...it makes a certain demographic excited that this is the end of gay / fat / weak people or something.
Moderately amused at the quote "We are ending the war on protein." In my experience, every single brand in recent years has been coalescing around the idea of making protein bars, drinks, prominently labeling the amount of grams of protein are in items, etc.
I'm not opposed, as protein seems to be a good target to prioritize, but claiming there's a war on protein just seems so out of touch to the point of absurdity. It's practically the only thing that people care about right now.
Yeah, (1) there is no "war on protein," (2) you do not need to eat very much protein unless you are trying to build muscle and you already work out a lot.
The normal recommended daily intake for protein is 0.8 g/kg. 1.2-1.6 is silly; that's a recommendation for athletes.¹
Starches have been a dietary staple in pretty much every society forever. Sugars have not. It's silly that they treat grains as a "sometimes" food.
There's also the weird boogeyman of "processed food." Almost all food is processed to some degree & always has been. We've been cooking, baking, juicing, fermenting, chopping, grinding, mashing, etc. long enough that it influenced the shape of our teeth. Certainly we haven't been making Pizza Pockets that long, but the issue there isn't processing, it's ingredients. And the reason people buy Pizza Pockets isn't that they think they're healthy—it's that Pizza Pockets only need to be microwaved, and cooking a real meal takes time that a lot of people just don't have.
Starches are basically glucose. They have a massive insulin response -- often even worse than sugar (because you eat starches in a much higher volume since they don't usually taste sweet).
It's very hard to overeat protein naturally. It's very easy to overeat starches and other carbohydrates naturally.
With regard to "processed" food, it's not a great label. I would use this metric: could you conceivably produce this in an average kitchen with the raw materials? If you can, it's probably safe, if you can't, it's probably something you shouldn't eat. For instance, processing often means "partially hydrogenating" a fat, or milling grains into a fine dust and bleaching them. Sometimes chemically produced oils are deodorized, because they would otherwise smell very unpalatable. You generally should not want your food to be bleached or deodorized..
Assuming that "chemical modification" is when you modify something by adding a chemical reagent to it, milk is chemically modified to create cheese curds, sugars are chemically modified to create vinegar and alcohol, and breads & cakes are chemically modified when they rise.
However, this definition of chemical modification doesn't really include hydrogenated vegetable oil. Industrial hydrogenation is done by raising oil to very high temperatures in the presence of a nickel catalyst & then adding hydrogen. We modify it on a chemical level, but primarily by heating it, not by adding reactive substances. And if that counts as chemical modification, then so does cooking!
Anyway, no—people generally used "processed" to describe a particular vibe they get from certain foodstuffs whose production seems too industrialized. There's no rigorous basis for determining what is and isn't "processed" because people use it to describe their feelings about food, not any underlying property of food.
If you search a simple question like "is bread processed," you get a bunch of articles saying "well, since there's no agreed-upon definition for processing and the definitions we do have aren't particularly clear, there's really no answer to the question. But don't worry, because (given the overwhelming vagueness of the category), it's also impossible to say whether processed foods as a category have any health implications, so you shouldn't worry about it."
Not to mention, that refined proteins don't have well balanced amino acid profiles and the lack of well balanced essential fatty acids to go with them is also a serious issue IMO.
The establishment guidelines on protein intake for decades (since the 80s) have been very minimalist, only looking to balance nitrogen -- leading to guidelines in the 0.8g/kg range. This is what they're referring to. Yes, it's still hyperbolic. But they're not talking about a relatively recent popularity/marketing swing. The new guidance of 1.2-1.6g/kg is 50-100% higher.
The irony is everyone already seems obsessed with protein these days, which I guess plays nicely with meat lovers / producers. The last thing Americans need is more encouragement on the protein front IMO. Suddenly everyone thinks they're a body builder when it comes to food.
The few friends I've known were attempting ketogenic diets over the years kept focusing on the protein side when the actual diet is supposed to be dominated by fat. They've all experienced kidney problems of one sort or another, surprise surprise!
Potatoes are the most satiating food at 323% that of white bread.
The second is Ling fish which is a source of protein, but another one of my assumptions is that when you say 'protein' I am doubtful you mean 'ling fish'. So assuming you mean a 2026 American definition of 'protein' you're probably referring to cow flesh (beef) which is only 176% of white bread, almost half of potatoes.
So, in the future I would suggest spreading the word and correcting your comment by saying "I mean potatoes do fill you up faster"
> I mean protein does fill you up faster and better with fewer calories which is good for weight loss or management.
Thank you for exemplifying the problem so clearly - conflating protein with fat when we're really talking about a simple carbohydrates issue of high energy density with negative satiety.
Excess protein is excreted renally, it's easy to overdo and can cause serious problems.
Protein is actually pretty hard to overdo naturally. If you've ever tried to follow the high protein guidelines and you're a taller or broader shouldered person you'll find that getting that amount of protein requires supplementation or a lot of focus on lean meats. I'm not saying everyone needs to go "high" protein, I'm just saying that worrying about the amount of protein you're eating is probably not worth doing. You'll feel pretty full if you eat a lot of protein.
Keto is not just "high fat" though. Keto is about producing ketones, and going too high fat can actually be counterproductive there, at least for weight loss. (You want to be liberating fat from your storage, not getting it from external sources)
A hypothesis with zero supporting data and primarily argued in a couple pop culture books is not something you should give any weight.
Scientists do not write books when they have actual, meaningful findings.
You've made this claim all over this comment section, so it's pretty frustrating to find it comes from a pretty awful source.
I promise you, it is trivial to overeat protein. Americans love their 16oz steaks, and yet one pound of steak in a single meal is almost certainly "Too much" for a non-athelete diet.
Meanwhile, simply look to every eating competition which uses a meat. There does not seem to be any natural limitation to overconsuming meat.
Hmm, how do you figure? Just about every source I can find shows slow burning carbs, fiber, and protein rich foods blow fatty foods out of water in terms of satiety. (if you are using a metric other than satiety to represent "fills you up", feel free to correct me)
UK supermarkets these days have a high protein version of just about every single product on the shelves. It's bizarre, and I'm guessing something to do with more protein being the advice when you're on GLP-1 drugs. The one that makes me laugh the most is "high protein" peanut butter.
Whey used to be a waste product of the dairy industry, now you sprinkle 20gr of it on anything and you can sell the product with a 50% markup as "high protein XYZ"
The market has clearly moved on, as you've identified, primarily due to bro science. Meanwhile, the medical establishment still thinks protein is going to kill you.
> Protein target: 1.2–1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight per day.
I was amused to see (kilo)grams used for the weights. I'll admit that as an American, I have no idea what my weight is in kilograms. Body weight is something that I always think of in pounds. I do use grams sometimes in food prep, but I think even that makes me a bit of an abnormality around here.
Not that I am complaining about their unit choice. I think American's would do well to be a bit more "bilingual" in our measurement systems. Also, the measurements they give are a lot easier to parse than 3/128 oz per 1lb bodyweight.
There are 2.2lb in 1jg... practically, just cut the amount in half (0.6-0.8g per lb of lean body weight). I say lean body weight as if you are overweight the target isn't the same.
In general, this message is good. Particularly interesting from a country which has given the world McDonalds and Coca Cola.
The rise of Ultra Processed Food (UPF) is almost inline with the explosion of waistlines around the world. Not to mention several large scale studies have found clear links between high UPF consumption and cognitive decline, dementia and Alzheimer's. In the West, 60 to 80% of peoples diets are UPF.
What we eat is both a short term (overweight and obese people bunging up the public healthcare system) and long term (elderly people with dementia and Alzheimer's clogging up the social care system) catastrophe.
Generally if it's coming in plastic wrap, you don't recognise stuff in the ingredients, or it has a ridiculously unnatural sounding lifespan, it's UPF.
It's disturbing how penetrative UPF are in the food market. I bought an "Eat Natural" cashew and blueberry with yoghurt coating bar this morning. Of course, very unnaturally it has sunflower lecithin, glucose syrup, palm kernel oil and palm oil vegetable fats, making it technically NOVA class 4 UPF.
On the face of it, this initiative seems like solid nutritional advice. On the other hand, I'm a little dismayed to see animal protein sources given equal billing to vegetable and fruit on their new pyramid, and whole grains placed right at the bottom (below butter!) It's my understanding that people in the developed world already over-consume animal proteins to a large degree.
On the other hand: it's not like anyone ever followed the old food pyramid either. I'm now over here waiting with baited breath for the US federal govt to introduce some kind of regulation around the amount of additional sugar, salt and fats in processed food sold in the US (which makes up a large proportion of what people are eating right now).
The food landscape is complex and multi-factorial. I hope that they follow up with other initiatives to improve nutrition at a population level, like regulation and nutrition programs.
> Whole grains are encouraged. Refined carbohydrates are not. Prioritize fiber-rich whole grains and significantly reduce the consumption of highly processed, refined carbohydrates that displace real nourishment.
I am consternated at the proliferation of refined grains. Here are my USA observations:
- Grocery store or Amazon etc: Whole grain breads and flours are in the minority, but it's possible to get them
- Restaurants and bakeries: Impossible to find whole grains; 100% refined
IMO it's a no-brainer to eat the healthier stuff that has bran + endosperm intact instead of removing and attempting ton add back the micro-nutrients. (While still missing the fiber)
My understanding is that whole grain flour is not very shelf stable, ie. you have to grind it and use it within a few days or starts to taste bad. White flour lasts years.
A small flour mill is not that expensive, I wonder why more places do not grind their own flour?
In a 2000 calorie diet, 7-9 servings summed over fruits, vegetables, and grains vs. 6-7 servings summed over protein and dairy. 3-4 servings of protein where a serving is 1 egg or 3 ounces of meat means eating a meatless 2-egg breakfast and maybe a single hamburger patty at lunch and that's pretty much your daily protein.
For a 2000 calorie diet, the previous recommendation was 5.5oz of meat a day [1], the new one is 9-12oz. The new diet gets 18-24g of protein from meat. Meanwhile they are saying on their flashy website that a 160lb person should have 80g of protein, which no doubt will lead people to eat 13 eggs a day instead of 3-4.
Suffice to say, I don't think any American actually followed the old guidelines, and I doubt any will follow this one either.
So, humans lost all of their evolutionary learnings and confused about what to eat. This doesn't happen with any other animal. And humans call themselves as an advanced race of animals. Not knowing what to eat is regress, not progress.
Things went well as long as mind was a servant of the body. Then it became the master and dictator of body. The mind started posing itself as a scientist and started questioning everything that were well-tested over centuries. It came up weird things such proteins, vitamins etc, but it forgot that what mattered was the big picture.
Body suffered silently as it lost it's most critical servant whom it trained over millennia.
It was enough to know that water flows down the slope, apple falls to ground, Sun goes around the Earth and life follows a rythm of seasons. Human life never needed Kepler's laws, relativity, quantum physics, computers, cars or sugar.
It's not too late. Listen to your instincts and body signals. Live on a farm (farm means crops and gardens, not just animals). Eat like your ancestors did. Eat less, eat varied food, more of greens and grains, mostly raw with a bit of cooking or heating.
My sister's cat will eat food until she vomits, and if my sister isn't quick enough with the clean up, the cat will try to eat her own vomit until she vomits again.
If you put me alone in a room with a pallet full of warm fresh Taco Bell fried cinnamon sugar frosting balls, I too will likely involuntarily perform the scarf and barf.
There is something deep in our mammalian systems that never quite shook off the food scarcity thing, I think.
That's really not true at all. For example, rabbits love sweet stuff like fruit and will readily kill themselves by eating too much, which causes their delicate hindgut fermenter digestive system to shut down.
Like humans, they simply aren't adapted to conditions where they have unlimited sugary food like fruit, so they will eat too much when given the opportunity.
How is that "like humans"? Rabbits and humans have completely different digestion and physiologies, the former relying on hindgut fermentation. No human has ever died from eating too much fruit, period.
More than once I've seen dogs eat their own shit or shits from other dogs/cats
Anyways, if you pay close attention to how people live in advanced countries you'll notice we do almost everything we can to fuck up our health: bad sleeping schedule, way too much time spend siting, bad eating habits, &c. People half starving in the 1700s on a mediterranean diet were doing better than the average modern american when it comes to health.
I'm a pretty big fan of the cancer treatments that saved my mother, the emergency medical treatment that saved my wife, the antibiotics that saved my brother. Also, it is -15C outside, and I am very much enjoying central heating.
With that said, I do partly agree with you. I do think that becoming too divorced from the natural world drives a great many ills.
I think the challenge is finding the balance. We sure don't have it now.
I'd almost pay attention to the message, but Kennedy has no credibility with me. Giving up 90% of animal protein has made me leaner with vastly lower cholesterol.
Also came looking for this comment. I get the symbolism of leaving grains at the bottom, but it's dumb.
Just turn the darn thing over. I won't even complain much about having the bottom bulk be "meat, vegetables, and fruit" with just a tiny layer of grains at the top. But this is a funnel, not a pyramid.
The big issue I have with this is no kale or oatmeal in the pyramid image. And rice seems to get a bad rank too. How many fat Asians do you see? People diss oatmeal (lames, tbh) cause of “leaky gut” but is that even a real thing? There’s also glyphosates but quaker is nongmo according to the label. Anyway, I see “leaky gut” and I think quack. The pyramid should have more kale, truly.
s/1.2 to 1.4g of protein per kg of body weight/... lean body weight/
If you're overweight, your protein target should be based on your lean mass, not your excess mass. While you can have more, you're likely better off conserving the calories.
Also, personally, I tend to recommend at least 0.5g fat to 1g protein. This seems to be pretty close to what you get from a lot of healthy protein sources and given that you actually need a certain amount of essential fatty acids for your body to function, I find this helps from digestion, glucose control, satiety and even weight loss.
… eggs are $6.50/dz at my local grocer, this week. Hand-printed sign on the door apologizing for the shortage. Tyson bought a more local company, and the prices of the product I had bought from the local producer went up like 50%.
We bought a soft drink for holiday game watching — Dr. Pepper with berries or something — and despite a shrink-flated can, it had something like 71% DV of sugar in it. That seemed excessive (and I ended up rate limiting them because of it), but it is frustrating to need to constantly treat the products around me like they're trying to sabotage me.
Eggs and meat products are way up in Europe (at least in NL) too, bird flu, government buyouts to reduce nitrogen emissions, etc. Here's a neat page with market prices for eggs: https://www.nieuweoogst.nl/marktprijzen/eieren.
On the other hand, potatoes are down to near zero this year (bullwhip effect, last year there were crop failures and prices were way up so farmers planted more potatoes). Doesn't necessarily translate to consumer prices but nobody considers potatoes to be expensive anyway.
American's don't seem to have a protein restriction problem. Look at your average burger, it is mostly meat, a bit of lettuce, and a bunch of low-quality bread.
I had a "salad" in SF when I was visiting, it was the largest chicken breast I've ever seen, a bunch of bacon and I had to practically go searching for the few leaves of spinach.
Lastly, is it really the guideline that are going to help, or is it accessibility?
I think the effort is valuable, however hard for individuals to act upon to effectively improve their diet.
A simple do / don't list serves this better:
Do:
- Do consume more legumes or beans, lentils and peas.
- Do consume more fish (low lead options)
- Do consume more vegetables and fruit
Don't
- Don't consume alcohol or other harmful drugs
- Don't consume sweetened items (either added sugars or artificial sweeteners)
- Avoid processed food (try to cook as much as possible)
Instead of more meat, eat more eggs. Eggs are as good a protein source as meat, down to the same amino acid groups (unlike other protein sources, like plant-based). People used to worry about cholesterol but that has pretty much been put to rest by now.
I dunno about this. The problem mainly affects low-income families and residents of food deserts, and now the government is trying to put everyone on a keto diet. It just seems like they're not fixing the problems where they happen.
If you’d like a less condensed version of this, I highly recommend reading “In Defense of Food” by Pollan. It covers all the changes in nutritional science and food packaging that have led to the poisoning of the populace by the food industry, and it lays out a set of rules for what to eat and how to eat it in more detail.
Fish, lean beef, chicken, eggs, kefir, milk, cheese, rice, potatoes, EVOO, fruit and vegetables is all you need for peak athletic performance and optimal hormonal profile.
Kefir is amazing! My breakfast is now a Kefir shake with a half a ripe banana (those two work together), handful of frozen quality strawberries or blueberries, scoop of no-sugar added peanut butter and a pinch of salt.
Extra Virgin Olive Oil... a mono-unsaturated fatty acid blend that's one of the healthier minimally processed oils. Not great for medium to high heat cooking. Avocado oil has a similar nutritional profile and can tolerate a bit higher heat. If you are doing anything resembling frying or higher heat cooking you're likely better off with a more saturated fat option, tallow/lard.
Are we going to subsidize a broad array fruits/vegetables instead of corn to the point they become cheaper than processed foods? If not I think many americans will ignore this pyramid and do as they currently do.
For most people ‘stop drinking sugary drinks ever’ would probably make the biggest life change.
And ‘the athletes plate’ would be the runner up bit of advice if you want something simple - half th plate veggies, 1/4 complex carbs, 1/4 unprocessed meat.
If you want to do it with complexity, count your macros.
Agreed. I’m all for the government trying to help by setting/updating guidlines and I actually agree with the guidelines but ultimately any general advice boils down to - eat a balanced diet of whole grains fruits vegetables and meat, and don’t eat so much of it, just enough to feel full. IMO any specifics on what specifically to/to not eat isn’t helpful unless it’s tailored specifically to someone’s lifestyle.
Basically like you said, telling someone to not drink sugary drinks, stop eating out as much as possible and be more active is the only general advice really needed
Cutting sugar is worth trying for many. Even for a few days. You really sense your brain realign on more subtle tastes. And when you finally eat the usual snack or pastry you can feel the sudden overload of sugar (or at least your brain response to it). something you probably never did when sugar intake was high
My impression is that most nutritional research is just p-hacking on extremely noisy data. The only consistent outcome is that eating too much for an extended period of time is extremely unhealthy, regardless of what you are eating. Unfortunately, this runs contrary to the "more is better" mentality of US consumers who throw a hissy fit if food portions are not gigantic.
It's interesting to see the commentary on processed meat and inverting the pyramid. T
It feels a bit Orwellian in some way - Oceania is always the enemy, Saturated fat was never the enemy.
Meat is ok, I try and consume fish and chicken with the odd bit of beef, but the amount of chemicals that goes into processed meat like sliced ham would make a chemist blush.
I wrote a light hearted blog piece just before the new year on giving up processed meat if anyone is interested:
I always wish they would include a sample menu for one week that hits the daily recommended dose for every vitamin, mineral, fat, etc... without going over some calorie limit.
I really don't like web site designs that take control of things like my mouse wheel. This site isn't just scrolling down, it's advancing the presentation which in most places is moving down.
I question the premise. Why would you ask a government what's healthy to eat? That's a question for your doctor, your community, or medical institutions and universities, people who study that kind of thing.
Nobody asked them. The people who produce certain types of food paid them to shout loudly about it, because many people are used to paying attention to the government when they make loud noises (due to their ability to imprison you or steal your home or outlaw your profession).
> [T]he secret of propaganda [is to] permeate the person it aims to grasp, without his even noticing that he is being permeated. Of course propaganda has a purpose, but the purpose must be concealed with such cleverness and virtuosity that the person on whom this purpose is to be carried out doesn't notice it at all.
Note well that something being true, or false, or rooted in truth or falsehood has no bearing whatsoever on whether or not something is propaganda, or can serve as effective propaganda.
Cardiovascular disease is the NUMBER ONE cause of non-accidental death in adults. It kills almost twice as many as cancer. Recommending high cholesterol foods as staples is grossly irresponsible and will result in millions, perhaps billions of curtailed life-years.
So since the beginning of time when the government introduced the food pyramid, we've been in a totalitarian regime? This entire comment is so over the top I question if it's meant to be satire.
Drives me nuts that people still build these in 2026. Scroll animations should only ever be used to supplement existing scrolling. If scrolling is replaced entirely by an arbitrary animation, there's no longer anything to anchor the action, and basic UX feels broken.
Credit where credit is due, going back to whole-foods and single-ingredient foods is the correct decision for everyone, and is often cheaper. But you can tell it's with a heavy focus on meatpacking, and it's known there's heavy lobbying going on.
Is that a bad thing? I'd rather people eat single ingredient foods and foods without labels (fruit, veg) than neon green cereals. I guess my point here is that it's a little sad the 'right' outcome was as a result of heavy lobbying.
The correct order should have been greens > proteins > carbs for an overweight nation.
I liked the new guidelines given here [1]. However, I disagree with the protein target recommendation. Feels way too much for a normal healthy adult with reasonable activity.
> Protein target: 1.2–1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight per day.
Agreed, this protein target is high for likely many people.
Results from this meta-analysis [1] says
> protein intakes at amounts greater than ~1.6 g/kg/day do not further contribute RET [resistance exercise training]-induced gains in FFM [fat-free mass].
Said more plainly: if you're working out to gain muscle, anything more than 1.6g/kg/day won't help your muscle gains.
For those curious about why, see Figure 5. Americans also get too much protein already, ~20% more than recommended [2]. There are negative effects from too much protein (~>2g/kg/day) like kidney stones, heart disease, colon cancer [3]. Going back to the 1.2-1.6 g/kg/day range, this can be a good range if you're already working out, so get out there and walk/run/weight lift/swim/bike!
Protein is way underated for overall health
that 1.2-1.6g per kg of body weight (0.54-0.73g per pound) seems about right
but its mostly directly related to lean mass. Most people don't realize how much they actually need.
There's a lot of misinformation and stereotypes surrounding protein consumption—often portrayed as something only for bodybuilders and fitness enthusiasts.
But for people aging, people looking for strength, folks looking for reducing fat and feeling more full. Protein is extremely helpful
This understates the vegetable and fruit intake you should have. 3 servings vegetables and 2 fruit is under what you should aim for. 2-4 servings of grains is a lot of grain.
Ideally the bulk of the volume that you eat should be vegetables and fruits. Meat as nutritionally required/when you like it. Meat at every meal/every day is not needed. Grains are a good filler, but vegetables and fruits are king.
I really don't see how this is so different than what nutritionists have said for years. This reads as if the guans before was to drink soda and eat fat free candy all day. The three sentence dietary guidance still holds:
1. Eat food
2. Not too much
3. Mostly plants
Though the government's position seems to be at odds with #3. I would encourage more beans and greens, personally.
There's some inconsistency between the pyramid graphic and the written guideline. For example whole grains are moved to the tip of the pyramid. But the written guidelines say 2-4 servings a day.
What was that animation? It looked like 3 stock images coming together briefly, then flying off again, then the page scrolling.
Regardless, there's nothing here (aside from the odd scrolling layout of the page itself) I can disagree with. I'm already following this "diet" in the most part anyway, and that's without consciously thinking that much about it.
Coffee might be bitter and unpleasant at first, but like vegetables, you'll get used to it over time. Don't just seek out what suits your taste. You can't live like an elementary school student, right? Why not try eating vegetables first before judging what's good or bad? I'm not advocating vegetarianism, though.
In a way, "eat real food" functions less as scientific advice and more as a cultural signal. It could be seen as a rejection of industrialized diets and all the complexities around that. The idea of "Eat Real Food" might be a better default when you are hungry and looking for food. I guess time will tell.
In reference to this. I just want to tell the case of sugar alcohols and my partner. She used to suffer random intestinal bloating and it tooks us a while to discover the reason.
We were aware of the problems associated with carbs and sugar consumption and we tried to find alternatives so we switched to 0% sugar foods. It turns out that most of them are filled with sweeteners, mostly sugar alcohols, and they have worse consequences.
In fact, anything that you ingest, and it is not absorbed by your digestive system, must go somewhere. Sugar alcohols can be fermented by the gut bacteria causing other kinds of problems. I would say that the best thing to do is to reduce/remove sugar from your diet without trying to find substitutes.
By the way, my partner went to her GP (NHS) and they just dismissed her case by just saying. "Oh, we believe you have IBS". That's it, case close.
What I am missing in this pyramid are brain worms. Brain worms are real food! Don't fall for the ultra-processed glue sniffing practice all scientists wrongly had been recommending you. Have a proudly american-made brain worm instead.
Carnivore diet from 2022-2024 and now carnivore by day, keto at the dinner table I can't begin to list the health problems that completely disappeared or went into remission for me. Lapse and I'm a ball of misery for three days. Happy to have gone to carni/keto, wish I'd done that twenty years ago. The best time to enjoy my health would have been 20 years ago, the next best time is now. Glad to see this.
And no change in exercise or other levels of physical activity, home life, work life, or other diets attempted, right?
Its awesome that youre feeling better. Its possible, but hard to believe, that its due to nothing but diet changes and if it is, then its hard to imagine that such an extremely specific diet is needed to get the same results.
Why would I trust these recommendations? Much higher quality dietary information is available from much more trustworthy sources than the US government du jour.
Sounds like big government getting into people's lives to me.
Snark aside, american food culture is geared towards people working hard manual jobs, rather than desk work. It was fine in the 70/80/90s when people were still doing that kind of job, but times have changed. If you're burning 2k calories at work, you need a high calorie, high salt meal to replenish what you burnt/sweat out.
I would also gently point out that a "balanced" meal is generally better than a protein heavy meal. It also is highly dependent on your genetic makeup. I am much less sensitive to carbs compared to my Indian friend, My family also doesn't have a history of type 2/1 diabetes.
I'm also not sure how this is going to be balanced with farm subsidies.
Half the pyramid is dairy+meat, that's a pass for me. I do not eat those and my yearly health checks are as boring as a tax seminar on a Friday afternoon.
Think it's telling that all the things shown first and most prominently in their food pyramid just so happen to have massive lobbies. Beef, Egg, Diary & chicken.
Doesn't seem terrible but that already makes me very suspicious of the reliability of this
Fish is also right there. They are all high quality, readily available protein sources. It should not be a surprise that they show up so prominently as a recommendation.
The pyramid being upside down with grain on the bottom and fats and oils being on top is directly from south park.
The only difference is that meat, fat, dairy, fruits and vegetables are grouped together with this new pyramid with grains on the bottom. while south park puts fats -> meat and dairy -> fruits and vegetables -> grains as the order.
Scrolling that kills my browser. I suppose the info is only for those who can afford very high end computers and thus also afford to pay for real food?
The most important dietary intervention most people need is just eating less. The content of what they eat is secondary. It's not unimportant, it just matters less when you are still wildly overweight.
Seems like bog-standard stuff doctors and books have been recommending for decades now. Canada has had a food plate like this [1] for a long time. It's a good step forward but I wonder what the actual implications are. How many people didn't already know this, how much does it change behavior and how will it impact other government programs?
if everybody eats the whole foods they can afford, they will be healthier than if they eat an ultra high processed food diet.
The cost of living issue could actually work in favor of those with less money as they can afford less of the unprocessed meat and cheese, and would have to 'settle' for more lentils, frozen vegetables and other incredibly healthy and inexpensive food.
yes, I know the cultural reasons that will make this switch highly unlikely, but that is disconnected from the pyramid.
The popular takeaway from the pyramid will not result in a decrease in the popularity of takeaways, ready meals and other UHP foods.
The polarization of the debate is as unhealthy as the eating habits that desperately need changing.
Whole foods are affordable and healthy. My wife and I eat mostly rice, tofu, lentils (especially red), and vegetables (mostly frozen). We buy in bulk, spend around $350 a month on groceries (while barely eating out), and have a lot of variety through preparing the tofu and lentils in different ways. Our favorites recipes are from
Nisha Vora of Rainbow Plant Life and The Vegan Chinese Kitchen.
According to https://cdn.realfood.gov/Daily%20Serving%20Sizes.pdf, their recommendations do not meet their calories goal. Eg, for 2000 calories, you can eat 4 egg, 3 cup of milk, 4 slice of bread, 2 apple and 3 tbsp of oil per day.
Does anyone have a recommendation for a good course to take to learn the basics of nutrition. I've done some very very simple ones from my insurance company for a small incentive but looking for something more serious and rooted in current scientific consensus (which I hear is not always so clear when it comes to nutrition).
Traditionally, the US Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) is actually a policy guidance document and not a marketing or handout document.
Nine pages is laughable and sad. There are entire missing sections on different life stages and transition foods. (edit: I see it now, I scrolled by it because it's way shorter than it usually is) That kind of sensitive guidance on nutrition is supposed to come from this document - which is usually 150+ pages and includes input from committees of registered dietitians.
I'm glad some people are enthusiastic to find nutritional clarity in their lives but I can't imagine this is going to be helpful for the institutions or people that usually rely on it.
Also, please remember this secretary is actively ignoring a measles outbreak, has an obsession with instagram health fads, and is a disgrace to the global scientific community.
Eating real foods (e.g., whole foods rather than highly processed foods) is good advice overall. But replacing mono and poly unsaturated fats with saturated fats is total nonsense. We have thousands of studies spanning decades showing that increased saturated fat consumption leads to elevated LDL-C and elevated LDL-C is causitively associated with higher rates of CVD. There's no reason to replace olive oil with butter and beef tallow.
The only change from the previous dietary recommendations that I can see is that they recommend a bit of a smaller portion of veggies and a bit of a bigger portion of protein. Everything else seems exactly the same.
Am I missing something?
It also seems like the bigger protein portion over veggies is strangely what I would expect from someone on TRT...
Given that HHS is now run by a nutcase, it’s surprisingly not a completely insane dietary recommendation. I think a sensible person would do OK following those general guidelines.
That said, if you don’t like it, disregard it. No one is forcing you. I think it has too much emphasis on protein but that’s just me.
These guidelines theoretically could influence school lunches. Will it make them worse or better or change nothing? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I would love to see some evidence for the huge increase in protein on this new pyramid. I'm not challenging it, I'm genuinely curious if there's substantial evidence that a lot of it is actually good for most people.
Disregarding comments on the proposed diet (as I am not qualified to comment and it all feels relatively like what I have passively absorbed over the past decade anyway):
Why, WHY, does this page act like an Apple marketing page and require so much scrolling??? Thanks. I hate it.
The disparity between prices in blue states and red states is bonkers - a 10-15% difference in costs. Under $2.00 per dozen eggs (on sale, ~$3.00 normally, seems to be trending down too?) where I'm at contrasted to $4.00 or higher in big cities. The closer you live to ranches and farms, the cheaper the meat, as well.
If you go to farmers and ranchers directly, source your protein well, make a monthly trip out to the boonies, cross state lines, etc, you can get some serious savings. Hopefully things trend down this year, things have been rough over the last several years.
Beef may be crazy prices right now, but chicken is still very cheap and very healthy. Chicken breast here in a moderate HCOL area can be found for around $2.50/lb.
Similarly, we usually buy several Turkeys for the deep freezer when they're on sale, I also find pork close to $1/lb a few times a year. Eggs are usually pretty well priced but I tend to prefer pasture raised.
Sounds like meat producers may have lobbied for this, fearing the quickly diminishing costs of lab-grown meat, expect lab-grown meat to be labeled “high-processed therefor bad” as soon as it becomes widely available.
Nothing wrong with grains as long as they aren't the processed GM'd ones you find everywhere. Bake wholegrain spelt bread at home and you can make that 70% of your diet no problem. People used to only eat bread before, they were fine
Grains are way too high in carbohydrates and even whole grains tend not to be complete proteins. Eating little but bread, whether it's wheat or spelt or something else, will malnourish you.
The impacts of health of processed grains is large. The impacts on health of GM'd grains is zero.
I thought I recall from reading a previous 5-year one of these there being much more explicit information on ranges of micro-nutrients one should get (e.g. an explicit recommendation for how much Vitamin C to get). Is there an equivalent somewhere here?
Vegs should be at the top, meat & animal products under. Still an improvement. #1 health tip for poor autists w IBS: Half a bag of frozen vegs in a bowl + splash of water. Microwave 2 min. Stir. Microwave 1 min. Salt. Eat.
One of the dumbest, frustrating things during Obama's Administration was the partisan Republican attack on Michelle Obama's push for healthier school lunches.
Democrats should not reflexive be against this just because they don't like the current president or HHS secetry. Same thing with the restrictions on buying soda and junk food with SNAP.
The supermarket is filled with processed food.
Black cat/White cat whatever catches the mouse. The push to eat real food is good. Embrace it even if you don't like people behind it.
The current plan, as proposed, isn't even accurate or helpful. It has butter under healthy fats, which it is not. "meat" is thoroughly vague and red meat is very different from fish and poultry. Red meat of all types are filled with saturated fats associated with cvd and ldl-c levels.
It's not scientific and that's exactly what you'd expect out of RFK and MAHA movement.
This is the only good idea that has or probably will come out of this administration, and it’s still flawed:
- Despite folic acid in processed foods causing ADD and other problems in those with MTHFR mutations like me, folic acid does help prevent birth defects.
- The U.S. doesn’t produce, transport, or store sufficient quantities of organic fresh food to feed the entire country, nor would schools all have access to it.
There is a similar problem with genomic sequencing - when new twchnologies began to replace traditional Sanger sequencing about twenty years ago, it was (and still is) called "next generation sequencing" (NGS). But the field is still advancing.
Pretty rich for the administration that deregulated OSHA and massively harmed our ability to ensure food safety to tell people literally anything about food.
Is there any evidence that what people actually eat is influenced by government guidelines? I have a hard time imagining someone seeing this and making an actual changing to their life in any way.
It may affect school lunch menus as much of the funding for school lunch programs is guided by the USDA. So, yes, lots of kids' diets may be affected by this during the school year.
It's a marketing campaign and that's all it is. Zero substance on the website about what they're doing to make sure more people actually eat like this.
"In February 2010, Michelle Obama launched “Let’s Move!” with a wide-ranging plan to curb childhood obesity. The campaign took aim at processed foods, flagged concerns about sugary drinks, and called for children to spend more time playing outside and less time staring at screens. The campaign was roundly skewered by conservatives... But the strategy that Kennedy’s HHS is using to address the problem so far—pressuring food companies to alter their products instead of introducing new regulations—is the same one that Obama relied on, and will likely fall short for the same reason hers did a decade ago."
There are so many things wrong with this website and the underlying arguments, assertions, etc., as others have pointed out, I will simply say that according to https://www.accessibilitychecker.org, the site is not compliant. Which doesn't surprise me in the least, but it is a good reminder that this is not a serious administration.
it's great to recommend these things but if you're poor and live in a food desert, it doesn't address the actual issues that prevent people from eating healthier: money, living in an area where the bodega or wal-mart are your only food options, corporate interests that want us to eat ultra-processed foods, not having the time or ability to cook, and many more I'm sure.
Even questionable quality ground beef is almost always a better option than most carb-centric nutrition sources. It freezes well, transports is broadly available and can usually be ordered for delivery.
Eggs, aside from some of the disease issues are also a very good, nutritionally complete source of protein that are relatively inexpensive.
Another issue is that people have been conditioned to eat/snack all the time... a lot of people have moved towards 2-3 meals a day which is closer to historical norms... have protein be your main source, with vegetables as a side, and maybe bread/pasta at some meals.
There are also beans/legumes if you can tolerate them.
I was roaming around the rural Western US last year.
If I saw that there was a Walmart in town, I perked up. Consistent, low-priced and large number of grocery items. Likely better than an unknown, variable, often poorly stocked local grocery (or worse, groceries at a gas station/convenience store).
I also liked seeing the economic diversity of customers that I wouldn't see at home.
In larger cities, I'll choose other groceries if I can for better selection, if not better prices.
Of course, except for maybe Sprouts, all the places I shop emphasize ultra-processed corporte interests.
I'm not that far from a Walmart in a more upscale neighborhood, I used to use that one for my oil changes. Always interesting seeing a > $100k sports car in a Walmart parking lot (not referring to my car).
I like the title - average food in the US is absolute shit - both in taste and from health perspective. It doesn't even taste like real food most of the time. Just like sugar with some flavour...
I don't get the 'For decades we've been misled' though - what guidance prioritiezed highly processed food ? From the look on both pyramids, they pretty much recommend the same things, in different proportions (more proteins now, less carbs) - but I don't think any reasonable guidance promoted highly processed sweet carbs before.
The message overall doesn’t seem especially controversial. I am personally disappointed on what seems to be a de-emphasizing of healthful plant based sources of protein such as beans and legumes, although nuts do seem to be noted more prominently.
If the message is “eat plenty of protein and fiber” beans and legumes are a great food that has both.
To all the people saying this doesn't go far enough to change things: Of course it doesn't. This is a symbolic beginning, not the whole project.
Things like the composition of school lunches were determined for years by the recommendations that formed the shape of the food pyramid. What gets subsidized with SNAP and WIC was determined for years by the recommendations that formed the shape of the food pyramid.
The depiction of the recommendations does get fixed in people's minds. And then when actual guidelines come out for things that actually matter, like food programs, people expect them to correspond to what they know of the guidelines.
It's not that different from any corporate rebranding announcement. They show you the new direction they want to take the company with new imagery. You don't laugh and roll your eyes and say, "Suuuuure. Show us some new pictures. That'll fix it." You evaluate the direction the imagery says they're trying to go to decide if you think it's an improvement.
So, is eating "real food" like meat, vegetables, and fruit an improvement over a diet based on (especially processed) grains for people's health? Of course it is.
I'm not a fan of this government (or anyone else's, really), but I also think the people who are most likely to take this administration's word for it on something like dietary change are statistically among the people who would most benefit from this kind of dietary change, so I sincerely hope this works, and I'm glad to see they're trying to steer it this way. Even if the damn pyramid is upside down and looks like a funnel.
This has way too much emphasis on meat. Watch Secrets of the Blue Zones on Netflix, and Gamechangers. We can get most of not all our protein from whole plant foods. And plant foods have a ton of phytonutrients that are proven to protect against certain cancerous.
The new pyramid looks like a decent step in the right direction, and as other commenters have already mentioned: better definitions of "highly processed" vs "real food" might be helpful (but I think most of us probably have a fairly clear idea of what they mean).
Two more things I think should be considered:
1. Change the Nutrition Facts labels to say "Lipids" instead of "Fats". Seems like no matter how many times "fat doesn't make you fat" is repeated, many people are still scared of consuming fat.
2. Reconsider or recalculate the old 2000 calorie per day guidance. I have no actual data to support this — fitness and nutrition self-experimentation is just a hobby of mine — but I have a feeling that the "Average American" (which may also need to be defined somewhere) probably only needs around 1500 calories per day to maintain a healthy weight. There is obviously a wide range of needs depending on height, activity level, occupation, etc. but I feel like if someone is considering a 500 calorie treat, it would be more helpful if they thought "wow this is 1/3 of my daily calories... maybe I should split it with a friend" instead of "meh this is only 25% of my daily calories <chomp>"
Cook very large or numerous portions. Use what you need for 1 meal, freeze the rest to save for future meals. Based on how much your family eats in that first meal, divide up the remaining amount into that sized portions when freezing. Warm up the frozen food in the oven (still may take an hour, but you can do other things during that time).
Frozen vegetables are pretty cheap and easy to warm up quickly in the microwave or an air fryer. They may not be as good for you as fresh produce, but that can be a reasonable tradeoff based on the season and free time.
Chest freezers are reasonably cheap to buy (new or used) and cheap to operate, assuming you have the physical space and an open electrical outlet. They don't consume much electricity, mine uses about 75W for the compressor (when it's running, which is less than 50% of the time) and about 250W for the defrost heaters (which seem to turn on for about 15 minutes roughly once per day.
One extra thing to consider is preparing something that can transform easily into many dishes.
We cook a "big meal" every weekend (now in winter time is chickpea+meat stew - "cocido madrileño"). It takes around 1 hour to make, but the time is not proportional to the quantity. So we make enough for 3-4 meals for my family of 3 on a big pot.
The nice thing about this stew in particular is that you can reserve the liquid, meat and chickpeas in separate containers in the fridge. The liquid is a very good base broth for soups (heat up, add some noodles, done in minutes).
The meat can be consumed cold, or can be the meaty base of other things (croquettes). We can also rebuild the dish by adding broth, chickpeas and meat into a plate and microwaving it (again, minutes). Or we can add some rice and have a "paella de cocido" (that takes a bit longer, around 25 minutes).
You have to adapt this idea to whatever is available to you in your area and your personal tastes. Perhaps you can prepare a big batch of mexican food, to eat in tacos/wraps/with salad. Or some curry base that can double up as a soup.
This isn't perfect. It is superb though, compared to previous recommendations. Let's take the wins when we get them. This release is closely aligned with the literature.
The old food pyramid has been taught to school kids for decades—it was entrenched when I was a kid in the 1990s—and that has coincided with a huge increase in obesity in the country over the same period. Dispensing with it is a great step forward.
I don't think the old pyramid was around for decades. According to wikipedia, the "carbs on the bottom" food pyramid was only recommended from 1992 - 2005, or 13 years. Those dates just happen to coincide with the age group of 30-50 year old adults that are over-represented here.
It was replaced with a rainbow-like pyramid in 2005 which completely negated the concept of a pyramid, and then a circle (plate) in 2011.
We need to stop bringing up the food pyramid that everyone already agreed was bad and replaced 20 years ago.
What a brilliant marketing campaign for the Trump administration to look like they're doing something positive.
Yet, I see absolutely nothing on this website to suggest how they are going to change American diets. Do they think these guidelines don't already exist somewhere?
Yeah, I don't feel comfortable with anything this government says for at least the next few years. It doesn't matter how sound the advice is. There is an agenda baked into everything.
I also feel there's a role that cooking equipment plays in weight loss. I've found that having newer, higher quality non stick pans helps me recognize I don't need to oil my pans with as much butter.
I'm sorry to say this, but butter, even if delicious, is not a "healthy fat". It's "less unhealthy" than margarine, and perhaps that's what they are going for.
Healthy fats are Olive oil (especially extra virgin), avocado, nuts, seeds and fatty fish.
This is a good start. A start. The folks at the top, including RFK Jr. are still captured by big industry.
We need to get off of corn syrup, artificial ingredients, and harmful preservatives.
That said, food deserts still exist, and real whole food is expensive, especially in a time of dire economic stress. I thought that's what subsidies were for, but apparently they are for enriching Big Food / Big Ag executives, their lobbyists, and their bought-and-paid-for congresscritters.
We also need to realize we've been duped for generations into liking things that are overly sweet. Sweet is fine, but we don't need to add stevia or sugar to everything. One of my biggest walls of resistance that I see regularly with my own products is that people have been conditioned to expect that everything in my vertical is super sweet. Just last week I had a parent complain at a sampling that my drink wasn't as sweet as Prime, and thus it's shit. Prime has over an ounce of added sugar in its bottles. I'm marketing to an entirely different set of consumer, too. I offered her a million USD in cash if I could name 10 ingredients on a Prime bottle, and she'd tell me what the ingredient was for, why it helped her son, and the natural origin of the ingredient. She accepted, couldn't get past 1, and then told me that it didn't matter - her son liked what he liked and that's what she was going to buy. We've spoiled generations of people into accepting super sweet things with no idea of why something is or isn't sweet.
One thing I also do is that (i have the luxury of time to do this, which I recognize is something not everyone has) if i want something really sweet and it's not a fruit, I generally make it myself. If I am having a birthday party, I'll make the cake myself. If my nephew wants to leave christmas cookies out for Santa, I'll make them myself. If I want ice cream, I have an ice cream machine and I'll make it myself.
> That said, food deserts still exist, and real whole food is expensive, especially in a time of dire economic stress.
I can still routinely get potatoes in season at 20c/lb, carrots in season at 40c/lb, bananas at 60c/lb, dried legumes at $1/lb or not much more, frozen ground meat in the ballpark of $3/lb, eggs for less than $4/dz (almost as much protein as a pound of fatty meat), boneless skinless chicken breast under $5/lb, butter and cheddar cheese at right about $5/lb, 2% milk at $1.25/L (skim milk powder is a bit more economical if you don't want the milk fat)...
In less healthy options, white flour at 45c/lb, polished white rice less than $1/lb (sometimes as low as 70c), rolled oats at $1.50/lb (though I'm leery about the glyphosate), select dried fruits in the ballpark of $3/lb, bacon at $3.60/lb...
all $CAD, by the way. I converted weights but not currency. Last time I looked at American food prices, you guys had way cheaper meat than us after currency conversion.
> One thing I also do is that (i have the luxury of time to do this, which I recognize is something not everyone has) if i want something really sweet and it's not a fruit, I generally make it myself. If I am having a birthday party, I'll make the cake myself. If my nephew wants to leave christmas cookies out for Santa, I'll make them myself. If I want ice cream, I have an ice cream machine and I'll make it myself.
... Generic sandwich cookies and tea biscuits under $2/lb (though they used to be considerably cheaper)....
I absolutely agree with you about the sweet cravings, though.
Sounds like you like pretty close to or in an urban/metro area.
Food deserts still exist all over the US. And likely in Canada, too - you're less likely to have the same options in Toronto, Vancouver or Montreal as opposed to say, Nunavut or Yukon.
The issue here is that you specified in-season. The problem with food at scale is that humans are impatient, and want what they want regardless of season. We don't have seasonality in this day and age in the US outside of small things like pumpkins or gourds. Fruits are expected to be available year round.
Your food standards are WAY higher than ours (I say this jealously). Your government gives a fuck about its population. Ours does not.
You can get these things year-round here in Toronto, of course, they just tend to go on sale at specific times of year for reasons of supply and demand. But that's specific things like the root vegetables; things imported from the tropics have much more stable prices of course. And really, I'm happy to prep and freeze stuff, and to choose different produce seasonally.
The concept of a "food desert" is wild to me. I routinely walk 3km each way to get groceries and think nothing of it. One of the best ways to make sure I get exercise.
Do American Wal-Mart locations in small towns charge higher prices than ones in major cities in the same state? I think that might actually be illegal here. Certainly the grocery store flyers are for at least the entire province.
>The concept of a "food desert" is wild to me. I routinely walk 3km each way to get groceries and think nothing of it. One of the best ways to make sure I get exercise.
I too do the same. However, I, like you, live in a major metropolitan area filled with millions of people. Walking, or biking a few K or miles to the grocery store isn't unheard of.
>Do American Wal-Mart locations in small towns charge higher prices than ones in major cities in the same state?
To my knowledge, that's also illegal here. The thing is though, food deserts aren't due to proximity to a large city, they are more due to location economics. No offense meant when I say you're thinking about this the wrong way - let's break it down.
Here's the scenario: you're a food importer, bringing in food to Canada. You have 1000 kilos of, let's say, strawberries.
Because import costs are high, you want to make sure all those 1000 kilos sell, and sell quickly because it's fresh produce and it will spoil pretty quickly. You could likely just bring all of them to the GTA, and they'd all sell, because the GTA is nearly 7 million people so there's plenty of demand (and money).
If you really were concerned about sales and proximity concentration, you could extend the GTA area to the entire golden horseshoe, which is roughly 11 million people, all within a few hours drive to the heart of the GTA. Cool, right? You could quickly sell all those strawberries.
Except now you're ignoring Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa, Edmonton, etc. So you have to spread those 1000 kilos around to major metro areas, because that's where demand is.
But what are you ignoring here? The very rural parts of the country, because it's harder and more expensive to transport goods there, and there's not as much money because there's little to no economy in extremely rural areas - so certainty of sell-through is not as guaranteed as it is in major cities. I'm talking Nunavut, the northern islands, Yukon territory, etc. It's also extremely hard to model demand from those areas.
So even if you said, ok, I'll send 1 kilo to 1 rural area. Well, you're going to run into trouble because you're not going to have the demand, nor does the locale have any money so even if there was demand (and the economy strong enough for people to be able to spend on your berries), you have to make less money because you're spending more money to transport produce, and as you say - it's illegal to charge different prices depending on location.
So, in a very tight margin business like produce importing, what will you do? You'll ignore the most rural areas, because it's just too risky. And so will your competition, and as well, adjacent business that import other types of foodstuffs that have the same constraints you do.
And BOOM, food deserts are created.
In the USA, there's plenty of people whose closest grocer is an hour away. And because that grocer is in a pretty remote location, there's not many distributors who are willing and able to risk high-cost produce going to that grocer, because there's no economy to justify a higher cost product. So you get nothing but processed junk at those stores, because it doesn't go bad, it doesn't spoil, and can sit on the shelf for months.
It's just hard to imagine. I'm no stranger to the surrounding areas here, either. And I'm accustomed to a world where <10k population towns have competing grocery stores within city limits (and multiple restaurants), and the really rural people are farmers who produce their own food (and occasionally sell e.g. fresh corn at the roadside).
The difference is that you're close to a body of fresh water, and while it's cold as fuck for a good part of the year, there's enough sunlight and arable land around you for either farming or indoor farming to (partially) support the city's food needs. You're also still within an hour or two of a world-class major city with an urban area population close to 10 million people.
Like I said, you go to rural Texas or Wyoming, Yukon or Northern Territories, it ain't easy to grow food - the conditions just aren't there. And you're not exactly close to any urban centers or large farms.
Great. Now let's start replacing fast food places with places that still serve you quickly but serve healthy food. Complete meals of whole foods.
One of the problems with the way we live and work is that it's so easy to go for the quick option. If you're working 60+ hours a week or trying to run a busy household, unhealthy food options are really attractive for you because they're so convenient. People generally know what good food is, it's just that they make the sacrifice because there's other things going on in their lives.
I've said things like this before and people respond like "well, I run my own business and raise a family and volunteer at my church and so on and on... AND cook perfectly healthy meals 3 times a day!" That's awesome for you, you're amazing, but let's get real.
There's a chain here in Phoenix called "Salad and Go" that's pretty awesome... I'd love to see a fast food place that specializes in breakfast items that include keto bread options and low carb bowls all day.
I'll also get plain beef patties or grilled chicken breasts from misc fast food places in a pinch.
The website is beautiful, but I'm so tired of landing pages that require me to scroll for eons to see all the content, chunk by chunk. It's aesthetically gorgeous, but painfully impractical.
Its unfortunate the way modern politics has gone. I see this site and am immediately suspicious. What bullshit is there? What ulterior motive should I be concerned about?
Rather than reading it, assuming it was fact based science. Maybe not the best because governments never get things 100%.... but at least able to trust it. Now specifically because this is RFK's MAHA world, I assume everything on this site is a lie.
After reading through it I don't see anything terrible or stupidly over the top. Yes, more proteins and vegetables good, less heavily processed foods.
Why does it have to be another pyramid? Why can't we just use a simple pie chart? With a pie chart, we could compare both calorie ratios and daily ratios much easier.
Why would I even pay attention to guidelines from a government that wants to make political warfare in everything when the worldwide consensus on healthy diet is the so called Mediterranean Diet?
The world needs less America. Even in food guidelines.
i dont have the expertise to say whether this is good info but its nice to see other folks saying it is. but a government website being one of these scrollbar hacks is atrocious
The "Reducing Saturated Fat Below 10% of Energy and Risk of Coronary Heart Disease" research appendix says they purposely excluded any study before 2010. Why? Also they only included randomized-controlled trials that lowered SFA below 10%. Why 10%?
This Saturated Fat below 10% requirement is a direct contradiction of the earlier requirements to include more meat and whole fat dairy. You can't do both.
To be clear, the research appendix claims their review of RCTs does not support SFA intake correlated with coronary events or mortality, and thus does not recommend reducing saturated fat below 10% of energy.
This site is infuriating. The information seems banal and better than the previous pyramid, though flawed.
It is quite stupid to say that the US is sick because of processed food while ignoring poverty, education, and insurance. The messaging should not include that but what can you expect?
'America is sick. The data is clear' With an US obesity rate of what, 40% and horrible health stats overall, not much to argue over. Something should happen.
It's funny how language betrays how people think. Notice how it's always a "war" with these people. "War on motorists", "war on drugs", and "war on protein" now. These people are unable to think about anything doesn't involve conflict of some kind. Even in peacetime, they will find it, somehow.
This is Trump's MAGA diet, a replacement for the lame liberal DEI diet of the Biden administration. Not hyperbole, the web site states all this explicitly if you click through to this link: <https://cdn.realfood.gov/Scientific%20Report.pdf>
The Scientific Report mentions Trump 4 times, so I looked up Trump's diet. Seems he eats a lot of McDonalds takeout and drinks a lot of diet coke. It seems to me that Trump's diet is an exemplary and healthy diet that follows these new recommendations, which prioritizes foods such as beef, oils and animal fat (including full fat dairy) and potatoes. Cheeseburger and fries, and the diet coke avoids added sugar, while promoting hydration. Trump might be prickly about past criticism of his diet; now he can point to these recommendations.
Well it takes some politics to get this kind of culture shift. As long as highly processed food is cheap and working class people are paid what they are paid, there is no chance of anything changing.
Additionnally, it is generally cheaper to eat at a fast food place than to actually cook at home. And since people don’t have time to go back home and cook something for lunch, they just eat at subway’s, domino’s or mc donald’s.
And since this has been going on for more than a generation, today’s grandparents don’t even know how to cook from raw ingredients anymore.
The US is sick, but change doesn’t start with food, it starts with fixing the economic inequality.
Terrible website in both usability and conveying information but it looks nice. Info is good, Americans do need to eat healthier and these are good guidelines.
Also was this AI generated because Americans dont know what a Kilogram is and wouldnt use it to measure bodyweight.
Couldn't agree more that we should be eating minimally processed food -- our family spends money and time to do just that. I'm glad the gov is promoting it more heavily.
But this statement on the home page of that website is preposterous:
"For decades we've been misled by guidance that prioritized highly processed food,"
What guidance ever suggested eating highly processed food? Other than ads of course, but this implies medical guidance. Doctors, nutritionists etc. have been pushing minimally-processed fruits and veggies and avoiding highly-processed food for decades.
What a horrible attempt to portray this as somehow "new" guidance by a "newly enlightened" leader (aka RFK).
Nice one... so they look like heros for maybe $100k or $1m spent on a website that is like a hackathon showcase. But what action are they taking? Is junk food going to be taxed. Are they making healthy food more affordable?
Drink raw milk, get antibiotic-resistant e. coli, salmonella, and/or listeria.
Cooking is processing. Pasteurization is processing. Not all processing is "bad".
To be consistent with their supposed "values", then they have to end subsidies for field corn, wheat, and soy and subsidize organic produce. That will never happen because these are lifestyle influencers playing bureaucrat when they don't know anything.
We can do away with "pyramids". Canada's food guide for instance is pretty good https://food-guide.canada.ca/en/. Aside from lots of veg, you can balance the rest.
The Americanised diet had a heavy emphasis on refined carbs, added sugar, added fat, and no fibre. Thats a far cry from whole grains and pulses, which have been researched extensively and are thought to be healthy.
Cool, yet another pyramid that people will debate. There a lot of different diets. Try them and judge which ones work best for you based on your goals and which foods are available to you. A lot of people in the United States struggle with caloric restriction i.e. not which foods, but how much.
Clearly, both political parties are incentivized to provide good scientific information, so that their voters will eat healthy food and their opponents will sabotage themselves. (I joke, but I do wonder just how bad the political climate has gotten. Of course, there are several other competing incentives in this, too.)
WTF is this even referring to? literally everyone here is _obsessed_ with their protein intake, regardless of whether they're a meat-eater or not. of all the things America's at war with, protein is definitely not one of them.
A reminder: cardiovascular disease is right up there close to tied with cancer for the #1 killer in non-accidental deaths.
Cholesterol only comes from animals. Non-animal protein sources are much safer and healthier for humans to consume. This website is not science, it's ideology.
But we already knew that's all we could expect from RFK and this administration.
Is there any effort to make real food more affordable for most Americans?
Is there any proof that "much of chronic disease is linked to diet and lifestyle"?
Is our bar so low that we give RFK credit for saying "eat real food" which everyone knows, while cutting vaccination recommendations, defunding public health and making our health care worse? The implication that chronic illness is a "lifestyle" problem is victim blaming, sure you can point to a lot of individual cases where this is the case, but the main issue is access to good, affordable food. I'm convinced the one thing that ties the varied MAGA coalition together is a belief that the problems of modern America are moral failings of the masses. Many of the coalition truly believe it, and the people rigging the system are more than happy to fund them to distract from their looting, just as the sugar industry funded blaming fat for obesity.
I don't like to be this righteous on HN, but RFK wagging his finger about how "diet and lifestyle" causes most chronic disease, which is where 90% healthcare costs go to, just upsets me. If you truly believe that, then who cares if people suffer from chronic disease. Go ahead and gut public health and the CDC, most people with chronic diseases brought it upon themselves! Doctor says "Eat Real Food".
The only hope I have is that he's committed enough to battle lobbyists and introduce more food regulations, like he did with food dye. That's the tough work, against entrenched power structures and real risk. Until then, it's all just talk.
Here's the problem: the Republican government is against almost everything that is proven to improve health outcomes.
They are against transit funding, urbanism, bike lanes, etc, and are pro-automobile and pro-car-dependency. Remember when Republicans literally killed high speed rail in Ohio?
They are essentially anti-city almost as a base concept. See all their political jabs at cities like New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. One of the healthiest states in terms of obesity rates, California, is the party's punching bag.
The party is trying to end ACA subsidies and is against universal healthcare and access to preventative care. How will Americans access dieticians and nutritionists if they can't afford private health insurance?
How will Americans eat real food if Republicans decide to hold food stamps hostage every time there is a budget dispute?
Trump himself is known to be anti-exercise on a personal level. [1]
Something this does not actually seem to address is that even our “real food” is also polluted with massive glyphosate. And no, it is also something that is a massive problem in Europe, including meat, which does not get as regulated as vegetables and fruits, so levels can often be even higher.
This young woman did an excellent explanation of the overall state of things in a YouTube video, for anyone that wants an intro.
https://youtu.be/s64PNMAK92c
RFK is insane about a lot of things but I've been eating roughly like this with a focus on lean protein and fresh produce and I brought myself back from the brink of prediabetes and basically got rid of my sleep apnea. Besides, the last food pyramid was just as worked by industry lobbyists as this one is. That's the problem with tolerating a little bit of corruption: the difference between you and the blatantly corrupt goes from being a difference of kind to merely a difference of degree.
All of this coming while the administration guts science funding, food inspections, vaccine guidelines, handouts to farmers producing nutrient poor foods, corporatist policies creating more food deserts.
thoroughly discredits what they are trying to do, even if there is some good in here.
Phew! Finally Americans can stop eating according to the old dietary guidelines! Everyone clear out your pantries and fridges and get with the new hotness. Those old guidelines, you see, were the cause of all of the obesity and poor health!
...wait, you mean to tell me extraordinarily few Americans actually listened to guidelines? That this is all performative nonsense?
Honestly, it isn't as ignorant as I expected (although it of course pushes for "whole milk" and other bits of ignorant advice), but it's basically playing on the ignorance of the readers. Americans already eat some of the most amounts of protein worldwide -- yet of course proclaims an imaginary "war on protein" strawman -- yet also are one of the fattest and least healthy countries.
People actually following the prior guidelines in earnest would likely be in great metabolic shape. But Americans don't: They gobble cheeseburgers and drink a dozen cokes and complain that stupid big medicine is trying to con them, while reciting some nonsense a supplement huckster chiropractor told them on YouTube.
I mean, the site runs like ass on my machine and gets the scrolling wrong a lot
But the recommendations are actually pretty good, and I even think the wording and tone is right, and I think it could stick in the minds of modern generations.
It does a good job of not pushing or engaging in any sort of BS conspiracy against seed oil or telling you to eat raw bull testicles or any bullshit.
Though, to be frank, this is what the entire medical establishment has been saying without fail for over 30 years. This was known when we built the original Food Pyramid. We expanded the grains category in it because of grain grower lobbying, and it was known to be not that important, though a grain heavy diet would have been a beneficial recommendation a hundred years ago when America was less wealthy.
The food pyramid shown here was replaced by the Bush Jr admin 20 years ago. Then we had a short lived pyramid that made no suggestions on amounts, and encouraged physical activity, and that was replaced by MyPlate which hilariously puts "dairy" in a glass as if you should regularly drink milk and not otherwise consume dairy.
My one qualm is that 100g per normal sized person of protein per day I think is a bit much, but Americans already do that for diet choice reasons. It really should be more plant food than meat.
But the official medical guidance has been identical for my entire life at least: "Eat a varied and balanced diet, don't over snack, don't drink calories, eat lots of plant fiber, eat basically anything in light moderation, exercise"
Oh sure, the tabloids at the checkout always have some diet fad. It was never supported by science or recommended by the actual field of medical science. Even during the 90s when we supposedly demonized fat, that was primarily diet culture.
The reality is knowing "what is a healthy diet" hasn't been the limiting factor in several generations. People aren't fat because they think chips, soda, and chicken nuggets are healthy for heavens sake.
War on protein? I don't know of any war on protein, but I do live in a more liberal area than the rest of the country. Considering this is coming from a more conservative government, I wonder what war on protein is going on in conservative areas of the country. Why were conservatives having a war on protein?
FTFY: Eat Real Food -- if you can afford it and have time to.
But I'm sure the Administration will accompany this release with various programs to boost access for the bottom 50% to fresh produce, meat, etc. right?
let me first post a shallow, obligatory complaint about the unreadability of this submission due to egregious scrolljacking.
for those interested without getting angered by weird scroll behavior, see below.
too bad there's such a focus on animal protein/products, which isn't all that good if you want to design a world-wide society of billions of people that's going to last into the next 1000 years. seems like at least half of the pyramid was designed by Big Agro lobbyists. other than that, i guess anything's better than what the average american eats now.
----
Protein, Dairy, & Healthy Fats:
We are ending the war on protein. Every meal must prioritize high-quality, nutrient-dense protein from both animal and plant sources, paired with healthy fats from whole foods such as eggs, seafood, meats, full-fat dairy, nuts, seeds, olives, and avocados.
Protein target: 1.2–1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight per day.
Vegetables & Fruits:
Vegetables and fruits are essential to real food nutrition. Eat a wide variety of whole, colorful, nutrient-dense vegetables and fruits in their original form, prioritizing freshness and minimal processing.
Vegetables: 3 servings per day.
Fruits: 2 servings per day.
Whole Grains:
Whole grains are encouraged. Refined carbohydrates are not. Prioritize fiber-rich whole grains and significantly reduce the consumption of highly processed, refined carbohydrates that displace real nourishment.
Because the current administration has an overriding focus on self-aggrandizement and the struggle against persecution by hidden forces. All communications and outputs of the administration must pay lip service to said focus, no matter how unprofessional or off-topic such virtue signaling may be.
Because this is the language of the trump administration. Everything needs to be momentus. The good must always be beating an unknown and all powerful enemy
Are you not enjoying the tremendous amount of winning the current usa administration is doing? Can't win big without a nice war or two going on. War is peace, citizen.
I've heard this claim repeated a lot, in the case of soy "very poor" just doesn't seem supported by the data and more importantly in a real world setting one particular protein source lacking a specific amino acid doesn't matter as much because it is mostly not consumed in isolation.
But non-animal proteins bio-accumulate less harmfull stuff (like lead) and contain more useful minerals. I hate doing the "the truth is in the middle" guy, but here, the correct diet is clearly in the middle, no?
i agree that plant proteins usually contain more beneficial minerals than meat, but that also certainly includes lead. whole plants and especially plant-based protein products contain lots of lead, but it's unclear if this is a huge problem
Stick with this list and kick the refined carbs, limit even whole grains and no sugar (including most alcohol) and it's actually difficult to be over 15% body fat even if you overeat all the rest (assuming no hormonal issues, that can throw a wrench into things).
Alcohol is neither a carb nor sugar and weight is largely a function of calories in versus calories out. All of the hand-wringing about HFCS and seed oils and deep fried Crisco is misplaced; while these things are all unhealthy in their own way obesity is largely a function of sedentary lifestyles and overeating.
Nobody wants to hear that they're a lazy glutton, however, so pop health media conflates various causes and effects. In other words eating foods with higher satiety and lower macronutrient density and walking more is harder than introducing a new dietary restriction to combat the "monster of the week" - inflammation, microbiome imbalance, etc.
> weight is largely a function of calories in versus calories out
Yes, but calories are much easier to rack up in some foods compared to others. There’s this great exhibit I took my kid to see in a science museum that showed that the number of calories in four twinkies was equivalent to something like 20 pounds of carrots. Not sure if those were the exact numbers (it was a long time ago) but the point is that in the modern world it is virtually impossible to become obese if you are eating even large amounts of, say, baked chicken and steamed veggies. No obese person is overeating healthy foods.
Yes. As someone who's struggled with weight and finally approaching below 20% body fat as a man, I wish this had come out ten years ago. Nothing helped until I switched to this eating plan. It is impossible to overeat actual meat and veggies. (Note the actual meat part, eating processed meats loaded with carbs is not helpful)
Lol good one. Anything matching .real.\.gov$ can be discarded as BS these days...
Edit:
Actually make that simply .*\.gov$
It's unbelievable to which point this clown show has permanently dismantled US soft power. Guess they think they have enough hard power to compensate. What with all that good raw milk and meat they're eating...
0,9 grams per kg of LEAN weight is more than enough for normal activity.
You don't need to feed the fat any protein as it will only accumulate more fat.
And food produces a third of the emissions of humankind out of which full vegan would obliterate two thirds as in total of 25% of our emissions. Add the land use rewilding effect of 50-100 gigaton and we'd be net neutral with this one change.
Considering the iconic burning Macdonalds video and this recommendation we seem to be doomed.
Tyson foods and other meatpacking companies lobbied and funded RFK...
Here's industry reports
https://www.nationalbeefwire.com/doctors-group-applauds-comm...
https://www.wattagnet.com/business-markets/policy-legislatio...
And straight up lobbying groups
https://www.nationalchickencouncil.org/new-dietary-guideline...
https://www.meatinstitute.org/press/recommend-prioritizing-p...
Lobbying groups, putting out press releases, claiming victory...
Here's some things you won't find in any of the documents, including the PDFs at the bottom: community gardens, local food, farmers markets, grass fed, free range... Because agribusiness doesn't make money with those.
Just because you might like the results doesn't mean they aren't corrupt as hell
> grass fed, free range... Because agribusiness doesn't make money with those.
Agribusiness absolutely makes money off of those. In fact they had a hilariously easy time adapting to the consumer trend because all they had to do to label a cow “free range” or “grass fed” was change the finishing stage to a lower density configuration instead of those abominable feed lots you see along highways. The first two stages, rearing and pasturing, didn’t change because they were already “free range” and “grass fed”. Half of the farmland in the US is pastureland and leaving animals in the field to eat grass was always the cheapest way to rear and grow them. They only really get fed corn and other food at the end to fatten them up for human consumption.
The dirty not-so-secret is that free range/grass fed cows eat almost the exact same diet as regular cows, they just eat a little more grass because they’re in the field more during finishing. They’re still walking up to troughs of feed, because otherwise the beef would be unpalatable and grow quite slower.
True grass fed beef is generally called “grass finished” beef and it’s unregulated so you won’t find it at a supermarket. They taste gamier and usually have a metallic tang that I quite honestly doubt would ever be very popular. The marbling is also noticeably different and less consistent. Grain finished beef became popular in the 1800s and consumers in the West have strongly preferred it since.
I’m not sure you can even find a cow in the entire world that isn’t “grass fed”. Calves need the grass for their gut microbiomes to develop properly.
> all they had to do to label a cow “free range” or “grass fed” was change the finishing stage to a lower density configuration instead of those abominable feed lots you see along highways.
And this is exactly what people have wanted, and are willing to pay a premium for.
I appreciate the depth of your responses in this thread. I feel frustrated to see so many nitpicky comments on your responses, but I appreciate that you address them anyway.
One non-nitpicky critique of the parent you replied to: under USDA labeling rules, a product may only be labeled “grass-fed” if the producer can substantiate that cattle were fed a 100% forage diet after weaning. Feeding grain, including corn during finishing, disqualifies the claim. While there is no standalone statute banning grain feeding, labeling grain-fed beef as “grass-fed” would be considered false or misleading and is not permitted by USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service.
Interesting
In New Zealand dairy herds are routinely fed all sorts of supplemental feed (palm kernel leftover from pressing palm oil, imported from Indonesia is particularly popular, with cows as well as farmers I guess) yet the products are labeled "grass fed" because the cows are kept in bare paddocks with grass underfoot.
The cows have no shade nor shelter from storms and would be much better off in herd homes, but cheapness and very little care for animal welfare
> Grain finished beef became popular in the 1800s and consumers in the West have strongly preferred it since.
Don't conflate the US and the "west".
> Don't conflate the US and the "west".
I only vaguely said “the West” because I didn’t want to get into the complexities of subsistence farming, regional quirks, and pedantics like “soybeans hulls are often considered roughage”.
About a third of beef in the world is truly grass finished and two thirds of that is subsistence farmers who can’t afford the grain. Most of the rest comes from Australia, Brazil, and New Zealand because it’s more competitive to leave them in pasture than import the grain.
As much as you may want to hold your nose up at the US, the (vast) majority of beef sold in the world is grain finished and has been for a long time. It’s just more economically competitive and people strongly prefer the taste and texture.
Grain finished has higher fat content. Better marbling and generally grades higher. Wagyu is grain fed for a reason.
> and people strongly prefer the taste and texture.
...and _people in the USA_ strongly prefer...
Although, I don't know how solid the evidence for even that statement is.
If you want solid evidence you can read a book on the history of animal husbandry. Roman sources include Cato the Elder, Columella, and Varro describe how they used supplemental grains to get cows through the winter and provide oxen enough energy to work (and to feed cavalry which would have been completely impossible without them). Humanity has been feeding grains to cattle for thousands of years, likely prehistorically.
Then in the first half of 1800s a bunch of American farmers with an abundance of corn independently discovered that they could grow bigger cows for slaughter in half the time if they fed them grains instead of roughage like hay or grass. That idea quickly spread to Europe and by the time the green revolution and globalization rolled around in the second half of the 20th century, almost every body started doing it.
This isn’t some new phenomenon. It predates the globalization of agriculture and if you were to ask a random farmer around the world whether they feed their cows a ton of grain they’d look at you like you were asking a very stupid question.
It’d be like asking “do plants need fertilizer?” Yes. If you want to feed the world, yes they do.
You've argued that grain is fed to cattle; which was not in question.
The parent questioned whether the use of grain for finishing was down to a demand based on consumer taste preference.
You've done nothing that would move them from their position of questioning the evidence here.
The detail you do provide shows grain feeding increases yield for farmers, which would be an indicator that it is financial benefit to herd owners that drives the use of grain; potentially moving away from your assertion.
Angus beef is very popular in UK, I'm relatively sure it's grass fed?
That is not at all what the GP was asking because this:
> ...and _people in the USA_ strongly prefer...
Although, I don't know how solid the evidence for even that statement is.
Is completely incoherent in the context of the thread and I just did my best to answer the two words “solid evidence.”
However you make a good point. There is a chicken and egg problem here between consumer taste and farmers optimizing their yield. I don’t have an answer, but I invite you to compare them yourself, if you ever get the chance to eat grass finished beef versus a high end ribeye. Or something like wagyu/kobe where they’re fed almost exclusively rice mash or grains.
As for “angus beef” no that doesn’t mean anything. The US/UK/EU don’t have any meaningful regulations about those marketing terms.
>Is completely incoherent in the context of the thread
Ah, well it seemed cogent and straightforward to me: the OP suggested that your indication that grain feeding was driven by consumer taste preference seemed to lack evidence.
It seems like something that will have been tested (certainly for low-n values), it also seems likely to vary by culture/region substantially.
One of my "if I were in charge" ideas is for origin marks that provide all information about inputs into any product made available for sale. Under sight a system one could look up whether the farmer bought grain feed.
where is the mythical land of people that prefer gamey metallic beef?
Wherever it they're finding people in charge of canteen menus.
> As much as you may want to hold your nose up
I don't. I just take issue with your grouping.
For what it's worth I grew up in a country that would be considered western where grass-fed is the default.
“Grass fed” is the default everywhere because calves can’t survive otherwise. All cows spend most of their lives feeding on grass.
Where exactly did you grow up? Without that detail “grass fed” is as meaningful as “cow goes mooooo”
I live in Australia and about half our beef production is apparently grass-finished. I believe what we get in the supermarket is more likely to be grain-finished, but I've definitely bought steaks with the telltale grass-finished yellow fat from Woolworths before. My understanding is that it's more about rainfall and seasonal feed than the particular flavour of one or the other.
For the record, I also think calling grass-fed beef gamey, metallic, and saying it's unlikely to be popular (like the top-level reply did) is an overstatement. The most prominent thing is the different coloured fat. The taste isn't hugely different, probably because our grass-finished beef still gets enough feed.
Do you hold your pinky out while you eat your "grain-finished" beef?
Cows and sheep in the UK (and I guess much of Europe) wander round outside all year round and I guess are eating almost entirely grass. You can't go for a walk in the countryside without coming across them constantly. Most of the beef you buy in the shops (not talking about processed foods) is produced in the UK.
> Cows and sheep in the UK (and I guess much of Europe) wander round outside all year round
Probably most of them, but definitely not all of them. https://nltimes.nl/2025/08/18/dairy-cows-netherlands-never-g...: “The total number of dairy cows in the country reached 1.5 million last year. Of these, over 460,000 cows—roughly 31 percent of the national herd—did not spend any time outside“
A factor with cows kept for milking is that you want them to be able to walk to the milking robot at all times, and moving food to where the robot and the cows are can be easier than moving the robot to where the food and the cows are.
Detail in there: during winter, UK livestock are sometimes fed silage, which is grass that has been harvested during the summer and partially fermented. UK is majority local production, but there's significant imports from Ireland.
People talk a lot about water and land use, but if you have the conditions of land that is (a) naturally watered and (b) not flat enough for arable farming, using it for livestock is much more environmentally friendly than, say, feeding them imported soy - leaving only the methane problem.
Isn't Brazil a big beef exporter too? [1]
[1]: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/brazil-surpassing-us-top...
Dairy in the UK also tastes far better than in the US. British people often comment how hard it is to deal with the dairy in the US which tastes like water in comparison.
So what you're saying is that it's at least a small improvement over the previous situation. Seems like a win regardless of who is making money.
What he's saying is that the grandparent (top-rated as of this writing) comment claiming that agribusinesses are hiding the benefits of "community gardens, local food, farmers markets, grass fed, free range..." because they don't make money off of them is unfounded.
I personally don't have any insight into the situation and I definitely don't want to defend big businesses, I'm just explaining what you're replying to.
> all they had to do to label a cow “free range” or “grass fed” was change the finishing stage to a lower density configuration instead of those abominable feed lots you see along highways.
This is a material win for humane treatment of animals as well as the health of the consumers who aren't eating the stress hormones of a tortured large mammal. The price difference isn't even that big. Of all the things to complain about in the meat industry, this is not top of mind in my opinion.
>Agribusiness absolutely makes money off of those.
I took the heart of their point to be about local food infrastructure and co-ops and farmers markets, and the grass fed bring cited insofar as it was complementary to those.
You rightly note that "grass fed" beef is effectively the same as "made with* real cheese", technically true even if it's in the parts per millions, and not at all a signal of authenticity it might seem to be at first glance. But I feel like this is all a detour from their point about local food infrastructure.
Most Beef in New Zealand is fully grass fed and it tastes...real. Some people would say "Gamey" others say "Actually has some flavour"
Like I said in a reply to the sibling comment, that’s a regional quirk (taste). Most of the beef exported from NZ to the US goes to meat products like burgers.
Australia is more interesting because it’s 50% grass finished but I could never find a source on how much of that was exported to SEA or US and what products it went to.
Another country that predominantly grass finishes is Brazil but they export mostly to China. Again I couldn’t find a source on how much of exports to the US go to meat products (we source a lot of our hamburger meat and pet food from random countries). I remember in all three cases very little is exported to the EU.
> Like I said in a reply to the sibling comment, that’s a regional quirk (taste
It's a "regional quirk" that applies to far more of the world than US tastes, by my reckoning. Even within the US you'll find plenty of people who don't prefer bland beef, and outside it's just... some parts of Western Europe that share the bland obsession?
Have you a source?
In NZ the cattle stand around in paddocks in all weather's with no shelter, but how do you know they are not fed supplementary feed?
Dairy herds almost all are
Thanks for the interesting perspective! I'm curious, is the metallic tang because of iron content or somethig else?
I don't believe that's true with 100% grass fed beef
> because otherwise the beef would be unpalatable
[citation needed]
> Here's some things you won't find in any of the documents, including the PDFs at the bottom: community gardens, local food, farmers markets, grass fed, free range... Because agribusiness doesn't make money with those.
Are those relevant to addressing America's national diet deficiencies? None of them are currently anywhere big enough to make a practical difference to most people.
Also most of the health problems with what people eat are from what foods they eat and how much they eat rather than from not choosing the highest quality of those particular foods. E.g., someone might snack often on candy. If they can be convinced to switch to snacking on fruit it doesn't really matter much if they get that fruit from Safeway or a farmer's market. Maybe the farmer's market fruit is healthier for them than the Safeway fruit but the difference will be tiny compared to the gains from switching from candy to fruit.
The point is with many hundreds of pages maybe there could have been something like
"local farmers markets have shown to address concerns about food deserts especially in lower income communities" or some obvious non-controversial observation. Maybe "community gardens have been demonstrated to increase lifespan in multiple studies"
The point is these things are decided on by a committee. To find out where their priorities are one of the bigger tells is when you find really obvious things that are not there.
If this was a sincere effort, where is all the obvious stuff?
I think it's less about that farmer's market produce being healthier, and more about it being tastier. I've encountered plenty of people saying things like "I don't like tomatoes" when it turns out all they've eaten are pale, out-of-season tomatoes from the supermarket.
A big part of getting people to eat better is educating them about seasonality and what good produce should taste like, so that they end up actually liking it.
A farm by our cottage had a sign out last year, selling vegetables. We bought some cauliflower and had it for dinner. It was supposed to be a side dish but it was so darn good I don't even remember the main dish.
Later I got some vegetables from a friend who had grown them at a local allotment garden. Made some vegetable soup with them and I swear it's one of the best meals I've had, and I've had some real nice meals.
Flavor in each case was so far beyond what I can get in the grocery stores here it's hardly comparable.
A lot of it comes down to what the person you're responding to said, seasonality. I grew up in a very rural farming area and now live in a very large city. While the produce at the grocery store is generally inferior to that of being near a farm, when things are in season, it is at least comparable. That apple you buy in July is never going to be as good as one bought in the fall, it doesn't matter where you buy it from.
No reason to believe their numbers either given the shenanigans they have engaged in.
We need to be smart and not knee jerk into feel good memes though. Local gardens and community gardens have higher resource use per acre than large farm ops. Commercial farm infrastructure is far more resilient and lasts longer while consumer gardening gear is cheap and disposable. Consumer gardening gear manufacturers factories burn tons of resources to crank out tons of low quality kit, consumers burn through piles of it. That's not sustainable either.
Plus you really want the average American dumping chemicals in community ground water to grow the biggest pumpkin in the zip code?
Americans need to find common ground on the path forward not fragment into tens of millions of little resource intensive potato farmers
> Plus you really want the average American dumping chemicals in community ground water to grow the biggest pumpkin in the zip code?
Just because it’s out of sight doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Industrial farming and specially animal farming is one of the most polluting industries, subsidized to produce environmental damage, population diseases and animal abuse.
The value of smaller gardens are not measured in the produce harvested but the knowledge sowed. Many are federally funded at schools, community centers, or local libraries to serve as outdoor classrooms.
> The value of smaller gardens are not measured in the produce harvested but the knowledge sowed
No, it should be measured in terms of amount of input relative to the amount of output. It’s almost never the case that small farms is going to be more efficient—not only cost wise, but for the environment—than large scale farming.
That's great, but they cannot feed a nation 100% or even close for long periods of time.
They can help educate a nation on which are the healthiest foods to eat, how to prepare them, what they taste like, etc. That may allow us to more healthily feed a nation 100%, while also using fewer resources.
> Local gardens and community gardens have higher resource use per acre than large farm ops.
It amazes me how few people are cognisant of this very obvious and important fact.
That's how Japan works...how horrendous ?
Japan is not a model to follow.
Been doing it the same way for centuries so, care to elaborate on what's wrong with how they farm?
Also, just because their setup isn't optimal, doesn't mean it's the cause for some ecological crisis like you seem to be implying. I live in Japan, I watch people farm every year, there is very little going on that makes me suspect there is some wide-spread ecological damage being done by people who want to grow massive pumpkins, even though, people do grow massive pumpkins.
You telling everyone that gardening is bad for the environment is interesting because I absolutely cannot imagine what is worse for the environment than the industrial scale monocrop style farming that goes on most developed countries. Like, holy shit...
> Been doing it the same way for centuries so, care to elaborate on what's wrong with how they farm?
You're talking about the same Japan that's had rice shortages for like two years now, right?
People need to eat and industrial scale farming is what enables us to make enough, affordable food.
It has plenty downsides. But it’s a brilliant and truly efficient system that is being perfected by thousands of scientists and it has prevented hunger and chaos for decades now.
If you want to see real change, people would need to have way more time, be less lazy, have more money and be less demanding when it comes to variety and availability.
In other words, it’s easier to keep perfecting the system we have because it’s easier to change procedures than it is to change people.
"enough, affordable food" makes me think of all the food waste we have. I do not think that food scarcity is an issue.
It's crazy how people are incapable of seeing something positive in the actions of the tribe they don't belong to.
If you think I'm a Democrat or part of any party, you don't know me.
I'm virulently anti-tribalistic and it's hurt me professionally, socially and romantically my whole life. Trust me, I've got nobody. It's a big problem.
So yeah, the tribal claim, that's just you. You're just talking about yourself
Sorry didn't mean to attack.
I'm thousands of miles outside the US sitting firmly in the center watching left and right be at each other's throats over absolutely everything so maybe we're kind of alike.
It sounds like you are having trouble seeing the positives in a tribe you don't belong to.
> positive change happens
> “Goshdangit why did arbiter of change get lobbied by [tangential cartel]?”
I don’t think it’s a good take, although I won’t go so far as to accuse you of political bias. It’s not like the guidelines say to eat Tyson-branded chicken; Let’s not complain about positive progress.
You know what got the flawed food pyramid created? Lobbying by Seventh Day Adventists. That did not get enough outrage as it hurt countless people in ways that are difficult to quantify. They made fat and meat the enemy across the country because of their religious beliefs. They paid off researchers and even had one claim that Coca Cola was healthier than steak.
Let’s focus on forward progress and not how we got there.
Not to go off topic, but this comment really spoke to me. Have also been hurt everywhere in life for being anti-tribalist.
This could certainly be fantastic, and very good advice. Or it could be a lot of bunk, I don't know. Given the source (i.e., RFK), I refuse to trust it.
The point of guidance like this is to be trustworthy and authoritative. If I have the ability to independently evaluate it myself, then I didn't really need it in the first place.
Of course, I might be mistaken to have ever trusted the government's nutrition guidance. It's not like undue influence from industry lobbying is unique to this administration.
>> If I have the ability to independently evaluate it myself, then I didn't really need it in the first place.
At what point in time was the government's guidance ever to be accepted on blind faith without critical evaluation? Take this input, compare with data on the same topic from other positions that are far from the source and make up your own mind.
If the government's guidance isn't to be at least mostly trusted, then I'm not sure the government should be offering guidance at all. (Which is perhaps a sensible position in itself.)
In other words, if I learn enough about nutrition to be able to critically evaluate the government's guidance, then is that guidance adding any additional signal? At that point, I should just rely on my sources about nutrition.
I've never been one to rely on official guidance blindly. For example I don't show up to the airport two hours early, and cheerfully laugh at advice that I should. But I'd like to believe that this guidance is better than total nonsense.
Many places, many times.
Trust in institutions is fundamental to a society that is goof to live in.
USAnian institutions are particularly corrupt, all the way to the very top. It is not like that everywhere
This is really just bothsidesism. In reality there are fundamental differences between groups in the way that people evaluate events, evidence, even their own party's questionable actions. Papering it over with by claiming criticism is all just mindless tribalism just serves to excuse those with the worst behavior. In this specific case, government food policy has been drastically changed to suit the peculiar ideology of one man, with no public hearings, no debate, and no scientific consensus. Is it not appropriate to be skeptical, regardless of one's "tribe"??
This 1000%.
A lot of people in this post need to do some self reflection.
Bingo. It’s pretty annoying. My tribe can do no wrong (in fact my tribe will freely point out its faults because again, it can do no wrong). Anything from the other tribe isn’t just wrong, it’s evil and all that is wrong with everything. Those guys are Neanderthals, not even worthy of telling the time to. My tribe is incredibly smart and gifted. We can do no wrong!
Unfortunately the only way to opt out is to basically stop participating at all. No more consumption of tribal news media and since most news media is incredibly tribal (even saying it’s not tribal is in fact tribal)… it basically means no more news media consumption. Which makes you uninformed instead of merely misinformed.
I dunno the solution to this. It’s a complex web of everybody playing to their incentives including the algorithms that aggregate things for consumption.
Again though, I’ll firmly emphasize that it is the other tribe that is wrong. My tribe isn’t biased or hateful or outrage driven. We say we aren’t so clearly it’s not possible.
If the actions and beliefs of a group are fundamentally morally repugnant to me, I think that it is reasonable to not expect me to be able to find "something positive" in it. We are not amoral automata with grocery-list style utility functions.
I have people in my personal sphere that make this sort of argument and it honestly feels like gaslighting. The undercurrent is: "Look, you don't like this guy, I get it. But if you can't see that he does some good, then you are the one who is irrational and not really in a sound state of mind." Meanwhile completely preventable, life-threatening, life-destroying diseases such as measles are back because of the obscurantist beliefs that come with this "new refreshing outlook". This is a bit like saying: "look, you can say what you want about the Spanish inquisition but they kept rates of extra-marital affairs down."
Corporations love this sort of feel-good campaign (the same way they love performative LGBTQ / feminism / diversity when the culture wars swing the other way) for two main reasons: (1) they distract from fundamental issues that threaten their real interests; (2) they shift the blame on big societal issues completely to the public. They do this with climate change, they do it with increase of wealth inequality and they most certainly do it with public health.
All developed nations have a problem with processed food. Granted, it is particularly severe in the USA, but the ONE THING that separates the USA from almost every other developed nation in our planet is the absence of socialized healthcare. This is the obvious salient thing to look at before all others, so also obviously, a lot of money will be spent to misdirect and distract from this very topic.
>If the actions and beliefs of a group are fundamentally morally repugnant to me,
sure, although if tribal differences are always experienced as fundamentally morally repugnant one might think the moral calibration is screwed a bit too tight.
>I think that it is reasonable to not expect me to be able to find "something positive" in it.
Sure, I do think it is possible that some groups are so morally repugnant that they have absolutely nothing to offer whatsoever. For example that tribe of cave dwelling cannibals in the film The 13th Warrior, man those guys sucked! But the comment seemed more to be about how it is weird that when you find some group does some things that you find morally repugnant then they have nothing they do that can ever be good.
I have lived in places in which I find much of the surrounding culture to have behaviors that I found morally repugnant, or intellectually repugnant for that matter, but even at my most contemptuous of a culture and a people I will at times be forced to admit, honestly, that they have behaviors that can also be considered admirable (in many cultures the repugnant bits are so tightly bound to the admirable bits though I can see how it is difficult not to condemn everything)
> sure, although if tribal differences are always experienced as fundamentally morally repugnant one might think the moral calibration is screwed a bit too tight.
They're not always experienced this way. But that's the trend in America.
> but even at my most contemptuous of a culture and a people I will at times be forced to admit, honestly, that they have behaviors that can also be considered admirable
Ya, I think it's something along the lines of "even a broken clock is right twice a day".
Do I need to give out a cookie when the clock tells me the correct time if it's fucking me on the time the rest of the day?
Even a developmentally disabled human tends to be significantly more complex than a stopped clock so the analogy doesn't work well.
if anything it is more than a computer with a lousy video and sound card, you don't use it for games or streaming movies or most things, but due to some other things (which I am not going to take the time to create a plausible scenario why this should be) the computer is actually really superior as a server, so you have set it up for that. Do you give out a cookie for the computer that works really well at serving content over port 80 despite it sucks for anything you enjoy?
> Even a developmentally disabled human tends to be significantly more complex than a stopped clock so the analogy doesn't work well.
I think it works perfectly, honestly. Maybe moreso after the above statement.
> Do you give out a cookie for the computer that works really well at serving content over port 80 despite it sucks for anything you enjoy?
No, I do not. Nor does the server ask for a cookie. It just does its job consistently without making a fuss. If governments could do that bare minimum thing, the world would be a better place.
> If the actions and beliefs of a group are fundamentally morally repugnant to me, I think that it is reasonable to not expect me to be able to find "something positive" in it.
No it isn't reasonable. In fact it is one of the stupidest things you can do. If you read any history, you will see that failures in military, politics, science etc. (really pick anything) are often due to key people simply refusing to learn from their opponents and/or refusing to adjust to the new reality. Often this is done because they find their opponents morally repugnant, or lacking in some virtue they happen to hold as important.
It is fine if you don't like the current US Administration. However if they do something that happens to be good, it is fine to acknowledge it as such, while still pointing out what else they are doing wrong. Otherwise you just come off as a sore loser and people will stop taking any notice of you.
I think this is true, and the broad sense of that website is an improvement on what went before, so we should acknowledge that. But it's also right that people point out the moralising tone and connect other administration actions and policies with an assessment of whether these principles will be backed by policies that actually make any difference in real life. My suspicion is that this will be part of an effort to further stigmatise people damaged by the industrial food industry without doing anything to make healthy food cheaper or more accessible, but I'd love to be wrong!
> If the actions and beliefs of a group are fundamentally morally repugnant to me, I think that it is reasonable to not expect me to be able to find "something positive" in it.
I'm not sure you appreciate how symmetrical this statement is. You are on Team A, saying it about Team B, but nothing in the statement actually depends on that permutation of teams -- it could be equally compellingly said by a Team B member about Team A.
Yes, but my team is 100% right about everything.
Well done. This might be one of the most childish comment I've read all day.
This give off an air of virtue signalling to the extend of self destruction. Almost funny thinking about it.
Try re-reading your comment and applying the same rubric.
Thanks for the tip. Just re-read it. Didn't have same effect. Anything else?
Nothing else. Enjoy arguing with and insulting strangers on the internet.
That is misinformation. Very few developed nations have socialized healthcare. Many of them do better in terms of universal coverage and cost control but they don't have a single-payer system or force healthcare providers to be government employees. For examples see Germany, Switzerland, Japan, Australia, Israel, etc.
Those diseases are back because of rampant immigration. People from other countries bring them here. It has nothing to do with "obscurantist beliefs", whatever those might be.
this is clearly a net loss for public health in general, politics aside. Having alcohol in dietary guidelines (without even stating a drink limit) is positively idiotic.
That trite comment is intellectual dishonesty set to 11.
Trite, yes, but personally I'd argue that accusing people of intellectual dishonesty (i.e. bad faith) is by definition unfalsifiable and therefore unproductive. Always.
Arguing with someone who is intellectually dishonest is also usually unproductive (unless you know what you're doing and want to convince bystanders). So it's more of a tie.
There are a number of lies and omissions here, as there have been from just about every administration due to agribusiness lobbying.
You're playing the tribalism game by setting up this strawman, you too are being played.
I'd personally be just as critical towards anyone who claimed they were fighting a "war on protein" that plainly doesn't exist. Americans consume more meat per capita than nearly any other country.
meat != protein, that's just where we've historically gotten most of it. Even meat != meat; it's totally acceptable to read & accept "eat more protein" and then figure out how you're going to get it within your tolerances for fat, sugar, environmental impact, economics, etc.
Sure, but guess how many mentions of protein that isn't meat based are listed on this new site
I was surprised how impressed I was by the website. The layout, design, focus on simple foods.
I think the person above may just feel skeptical of the scientific and medical opinion of most of the people running the US government. I know I do. When I read "gold-standard science and common sense," I rolled my eyes. Because the previous news cycle said they don't think meningitis vaccines are important for kids, yet say they follow gold-standard science. It's hard for me to reconcile the two.
EDIT: "rooted in...personal responsibility."
"America is sick. The data is clear. 50% of Americans have prediabetes or diabetes 75% of adults report having at least one chronic condition 90% of U.S. healthcare spending goes to treating chronic disease—much of which is linked to diet and lifestyle."
It also has this moralizing tone, and seems to make some pretty bold claims about why Americans have prediabetes or diabetes. For example, with the introduction of GLP-1 drugs, like Ozempic, people (including some I know well) have significantly reduced their diabetic risk. And they're still eating the same processed foods.
Also, "linked to diet and lifestyle" is a pretty broad claim. Maybe the undersleeping and overcaffeinating actually matters more for increased appetite and desire to eat less healthy foods.
In short, I just don't trust many people when they say health is so inextricably and exclusively tied to food source, especially when they tend to think most vaccines are net negatives for individuals and society.
The website is good information, and if it came from a NPO is would be great... But the US government has so much power (and responsibility) to protect the US consumers from the food industry.
- Ban some of the ingredients like they did for trans fat
- Force better labeling, like the Nutri-Score in France and EU
- Tax the more unhealthy choices so they don't become the cheapest solution - and maybe use that tax money to subsidize healthier alternatives
This site looks like they're just shaming the consumers for falling for the tricks the government allows the food industry to pull off.
I remember a European MEP who was fighting the food industry to impose Nutri-Score saying on TV that no constituent comes to them saying "help me, I'm too fat". However many expect politicians to boost the job market. The food industry knows that, so each time you try to impose some regulation they'll say "if you do that, we're be forced to do so many layoffs!"
> - Force better labeling, like the Nutri-Score in France and EU
NutriScore is mostly useless, to the point of being misleading. The system was cooked up by the industry, which explains a lot.
It is a label that tells you how nutritious a given product is "compared to products in the same category". So you could have, say, candy or frozen pizza with a NutriScore A and that would be just fine according to this system because it happens to be more nutritious than other candy/pizza. In other words, a product having a NutriScore of A doesn't mean the product is actually healthy or good for you.
I’m in Colombia right now and they actually have a great food labeling system. It just warns you if a product contains too much sugar, salt, additives etc, without trying to score. Whereas the European labels give you a false sense that everything is nutritious.
Who or what defines what is "too much" of any ingredient? Isn't that a scoring system too?
European NutriScore "assigns products a rating letter from A (best) to E (worst), with associated colors from green to red. High content of fruits and vegetables, fibers, protein and healthy oils (rapeseed, walnut and olive oils) per 100 g of food product promote a preferable score, while high content of energy, sugar, saturated fatty acids, and sodium per 100 g promote a detrimental score." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutri-Score
> Who or what defines what is "too much" of any ingredient?
Nutritionists.
Labels on processed food products go in the style of "Contains an excess of sodium", "Contains an excess of sugar", and so on.
So is it useless or useful? You write one but then describe the other (compared to other products in the same category seems value add for sure)
That sounds useful. Consumers most likely choose the food they want to eat by type, being able to spot the healthier options within a category sounds like it would help me in the supermarket.
We have a traffic light system, pretty useful. But when all items in a category are bad for you, and you know it, them all having red lights doesn't help much.
I'd certainly try alternatives that are marginally healthier, if that's true generally then it puts some pressure on food industry to move to healthier choices.
Personally I don't care either way about RFK Jr's new food pyramid.
I think the bigger danger of giving this credit is lending any legitimacy to RFK Jr who is actively undermining actual medical advice and wrecking havoc on our childhood vaccine programs.
Just because a broken clock is right twice a day, doesn't mean you need to give the broken clock credit for being right.
By doing this "oh it's just tribalism" lends legitimacy to RFK Jr and furthers his ability to kill kids with preventable disease and further damage the credibility of modern medical science.
"Oh he has some good ideas" Yeah? Which ones? Does the average american have the time/curiosity/capability to sort through which of his ideas are good and which ones will kill their kids?
Which one of his books have you read?
Tell me, which of the following books should I read? Should I start on the silly anthony fauci attack book? or the book on vaccines by the man who isn't a doctor?
The Riverkeepers: Two Activists Fight to Reclaim Our Environment as a Basic Human Right
Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy
Saint Francis of Assisi: A Life of Joy
American Heroes: Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and the American Civil War
Robert Smalls: American Hero
Framed: Why Michael Skakel Spent Over a Decade in Prison for a Murder He Didn’t Commit
American Values: Lessons I Learned from My Family
The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health
A Letter to Liberals: Censorship and COVID: An Attack on Science and American Ideals
Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak
The Wuhan Cover-Up: And the Terrifying Bioweapons Arms Race
A broken clock is right twice a day. Doesn't mean it's not broken.
It would be pretty weird if they were so broken they were incapable of saying anything right, even at times when they were trying to be ingratiating. You'd have to be astonishingly insane, more even than these people are, to be totally unable to identify something that would be good press.
I'm not saying they can't reach that point, but this ain't it. They are just getting details wildly wrong and being generally obtuse, but this is an attempt at not seeming completely insane and should be graded on that curve. You can't expect every little detail to be insane, that's asking a lot.
Or the current man in control of Health and Human Services is at best saying nothing of value. (At worst, he's sidelining vaccines for multiple infectious diseases, but that's off topic)
> community gardens, local food, farmers markets, grass fed, free range
How are these connected to nutrition? The difference in nutrition between a local banana and a non-local banana is ... zero?
because they're a source of local, sustainable, seasonal, and healthy food that isn't peddled by agribusiness lobbies — grassfed beef specifically is leaner, lower in calories, and richer in beneficial nutrients
And costs significantly more money.
ah but why...
* larger companies are producing it at a scale that includes efficiencies that can't be replicated on smaller scales
* the federal government is subsidizing larger farms, which have industry lobbying arms
* larger farms are more likely to be exploiting labor and working conditions
* all of the above?
And none of that, if true, matters in the slightest to most of America because they otherwise wouldn't be able to afford these foods.
but it does matter, why not subsidize local produce instead of factory-farmed meat? if we just wave away "it's too expensive" as some natural state (which it's not, it's shaped by the government) then nothing ever improves
we need to ask why people can't afford what's arguably better for the environment and the workers producing it
So the animal rights and environmental groups are upset that health targets are prioritizing health over mudding the waters with these other agendas? If those are worthy goals on their own then fine, but stop trying to suggest that we can't improve health drastically and more effectively by making simple and clear recommendations to move away form processed food.
This is a straw man.
The new guidelines prioritize meat and dairy above all else, which comes with well known health issues, especially at the rate Americans consume them.
There's already plenty of evidence (victory lap press releases from the respective industries) that indicate that this was accomplished due to lobbying... so we haven't moved at all: the old recommendations were imperfect and fueled by specific industry preference, and the new ones do the same.
> we can't improve health drastically and more effectively by making simple and clear recommendations to move away form processed food.
pretty much every nutritionist has been urging a reduction in processed foods for years now, the solution isn't to replace processed foods with meat and dairy... that's just a different problem
What are the "well known health issues"? I have seen some low-quality observational studies (junk science) which show some weak correlation between consumption of animal products and negative health outcomes but so far nothing conclusive one way or the other.
https://peterattiamd.com/high-protein-diets-and-cancer-risk/
you've got to find better sources than a health coach selling a subscription program that benefits from this take, that post is indistinguishable from spam
red meat and colorectal cancer https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4698595/
> As a summary, it seems that red and processed meats significantly but moderately increase CRC risk by 20-30% according to these meta-analyses.
red meat cardiovascular disease, and diabetes: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37264855/
> Unprocessed and processed red meat consumption are both associated with higher risk of CVD, CVD subtypes, and diabetes, with a stronger association in western settings but no sex difference.
So more low-quality, poorly controlled junk science. If you want anyone to take you seriously then you'll have to do better than that.
You literally provided nothing but spam behind a subscription gate. I provided peer reviewed meta-analyses.
When I saw that protein target, I knew there must be shenanigans… 0.5-0.7g per pound is within the range that BODY BUILDERS target for maximum hypertrophy (1g/lb is a myth that wastes peoples money). Eating 4-5 chicken breasts per day is ridiculous for a normal person.
quite off!
You need at least 0.8g / kilo (referring to 0.4g / pound) if you are doing nothing heavy, like walking to the office.
If you do moderate sports, you are hitting 1.0g / kilo immediately.
If you do some more extensive sports, like 3 - 4 days / week in gym, you jumü to 1.2 - 1.4g / kilo.
Bodybuilders are quite above :-))
Regarding the number of chicken breasts - scary for me, Im enough with a half one every second or third day.
There was a great movie about vegan & bodybuilding with known sports people: The Gamechangers - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_Changers
I am not sure if you're disagreeing with the original poster here but you're both saying the same thing in different units. 1g/kg != 1g/lb which is A LOT more protein and a complete waste of time. As a mostly vegetarian who lifts regularly, I am targeting a bit more than 1g/kg but being from the US it is a lot less than 1g/lb. :p
Wait, what? I lift weights and chicken breast is a fundamental part of my diet but I'm eating 1/3 to 1/2 a single chicken breast a day, and an egg for breakfast. That CAN'T be right.
I get that I include some rice, peanuts etc. in there, but even if I quit EVERYTHING else there's no way 4 to 5 chicken breasts a day is accurate.
It’s not recommending 4 to 5, but for larger people (I’m 200lbs) to hit their protein target I’d need to eat over 1lb of chicken a day which is a lot.
> "grass fed, free range... Because agribusiness doesn't make money with those."
They actually make a considerable amount on those last two items, taking advantage of those who want to consume meat more ethically.
(Though, in reality, "grass fed" and "free range" are both misleading terms, and none of the meat on offer is likely to be humane.)
They also received financial aid depending on the land surface they have (at least in Europe)
IDK man, this sounds pretty common sense:
>Eating real food means choosing foods that are whole or minimally processed and recognizable as food. These foods are prepared with few ingredients and without added sugars, industrial oils, artificial flavors, or preservatives.
Meh, I would note that the Tyson-supported definition of "real chicken" is not one without antibiotics and growth hormones, let alone a free-range heritage breed. This would have been the standard for a "real chicken" a few human generations ago.
I was wondering why meat and veg were side by side, rather than vegetables being at the base. The new pyramid is still better than the old one, but not completely intellectually honest...
Better than the old one in what way?
I'm not zdc1, but they may be referring to the previous advice that included more grains than fruit and veg combined. From a design perspective, it is an interesting choice to mix food groups on the same level of the pyramid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_pyramid_(nutrition)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyPlate
> previous advice that included more grains than fruit and veg combined
I have not seen the pyramid with bread, cereal, rice and pasta at the base pushed for at least ~20 years. Maybe it was 25-30 years ago when I saw it pushed seriously in school and even then I did not see people taking it seriously outside of those lessons, as in people actively calling it questionable.
> I have not seen the pyramid with bread, cereal, rice and pasta at the base pushed for at least ~20 years.
Thats right. It was replaced 20 years ago by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyPyramid
That is what I found on my quick search too. I am pretty sure I saw some alternatives to the bread, ... based pyramid before 2005 as well.
do you think they market those pyramids to adults, or to children?
I asked it else where but
> Where in the world was this old pyramid still being pushed?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46538456
> A person is most likely to see a food pyramid poster in an elementary or middle school classroom, cafeteria, or hallway, where it was commonly displayed as an educational tool during the 1990s and 2000s to teach nutrition.
the first one was in 1982 or something, so you have nearly 3 whole generations who were exposed to it (X, Millennial, and Z). I really can't tell if you're actually incredulous; because all the nutrition stuff is told to schoolchildren. Adults don't use a chart, they use self-help books.
Yeah, but 2000 was 25 years ago. There's multiple generations who haven't been exposed to it, so this is not replacing the food pyramid, it's replacing what replaced the food pyramid.
only 1 generation has completely escaped the one from "25 years ago" - Alpha; and another generation is incoming; and if the new poster sticks around, a couple of generations will see the new one, too.
> the first one was in 1982 or something
The first one came out in 1992, and was active until MyPyramid came out in 2005. Which was then active until MyPlate came out in 2011.
you're correct, my eyesight gets worse as the day goes on and i saw the second "9" as an 8. that only partially reduces the impact from my claim of X, Millennial, Zoomer; as i am gen X and i was still in "middle school" when the food pyramid came out, and my millennial sister assuredly was. the older Gen X (from the early 1970s) may or may not remember (as in an only child and childless until after the poster was no longer used) this from their younger years in classrooms.
My main point was (i think!) that really the only people seeing these posters on a regular basis are schoolchildren. I think i've seen the pyramid a dozen times in the last 20 years, on cereal boxes or websites or whatever, but if you don't recognize it, it's easily written off. Maslow also had a pyramid, etc.
I would be interested in knowing what cereal box you saw it on or where you saw it promoted seriously in the last 20 years.
In the late 90s I was in high school in a town with less that 80k people in the middle of the congenital USA and the pyramid with bread, cereal, rice and pasta at the base was not seriously pushed, or taken seriously, at school or when it came up outside of school.
Might be corrupt, but is at least closer to truth then the last corrupted version. Let's not let perfect be the enemy of progress
The incentives are wrong. Any good policy for bad incentives is temporary and incidental
This policy selectively emphasizes the most difficult to import foods so it also plays into isolationist nativist policies.
If you think meat lobbying groups just wanted a new triangle and this isn't going to extend to water, land, energy, and environmental policies along with farm subsidies and even merger&acquisition and liability policies, sorry ...
This thing is for them, their profitability and their investors. They didn't lobby on behalf of your personal health...
Open a position on the MOO ETF. I just did. Might as well make some money from it
wrong incentives, good outcomes? is there a world where the long term outcomes are also good, or at least much better than the current ones?
also, hi there! (da from oblong)
Sure. What about the public citizen efforts for crumple zone and seat belts in the 1960s?
Or are you saying bad incentives, good long term outcomes?
Maybe Napoleon's rework of Paris? That was done to control public dissidents but it also made it a beautiful city.
Mass timekeeping? Those were adopted for industrial labor... Seems to be quite useful
Joint stock ownership was I think invented for the slave trade but that's proven to be generally useful.
I think magnetic audio tape was made practical for a deceitful technique by the Nazis for claiming to be broadcasting live on the radio after they had fled...
In each of these instances though the thing long outlived the initial user
Is it? The change in recommendation is to have less veggies in favor of more meat. From all the recent research and meta studies I've seen it doesn't track.
It's still decent a guidance, but the previous one was as well.
The first food group listed is literally meat and dairy. The ordering here is purposeful, too, as they admit. One promo graphic includes a block of butter and a carton explicitly labelled "whole milk." This is a very definite downgrade.
Butter is king. It should be pictured with a crown, stars and glitter.
Surely whole milk is better than less-than-whole milk?
Why is that a downgrade?
Meat and dairy contain the bulk of the saturated fat in the average diet. It's pretty absurd to imagine a diet in which the largest food group is just meat and dairy, but due to the ordering, that almost seems to be implied.
The saturated fat → LDL-C → heart disease relationship has a lot of evidence and history behind it. A very interesting research project if you needed one. I call this advisory a "downgrade" because heart attack and stroke (among other conditions) are both: 1) downstream of saturated fat consumption, and 2) the most prevalent causes of death among people in the developed world.
It also very prominently shows red meat, which is the worst you can do.
fish > poultry > red meat. (Fish and poultry can be swapped, mercury is a real problem).
But really if you are looking for the healthiest proteins then you really can't do much better than nuts and beans.
Red meat beyond having a lot of links to heart disease is also linked to cancer. It should be seen as a treat, not the main thing you should be consuming.
> It's pretty absurd to imagine a diet in which the largest food group is just meat and dairy
Ever look at Mongolian cuisine? That's the bulk of what they eat. Most of those guys seem pretty healthy to me.
One thing I think we should better emphasize is that it's best to avoid foods that are bad for you, than to eat foods that are good for you. If you can't do both, you should focus on cutting out bad foods over eating healthier foods.
Meat (non-processed, no sugary sauce or gravy), and dairy (plain, fermented, no added sugar). Those are kind of "neutral" foods. If that's all you eat, meaning you don't eat any crap, you're much better off health wise than if you eat crap and try to also eat a bunch of veggies, fish, fruits, legumes, etc.
> It's pretty absurd to imagine a diet in which the largest food group is just meat and dairy
There's nothing absurd about this at all, this is my diet and my LDL numbers are great.
Dairy/Meat are both inflammatory and overconsumption contributes to a whole host of medical disease.
Some protein is obviously desirable, but the ratios, like anything else in chemistry/biology, are paramount.
I don't think the USA has a problem with under consumption of meat and dairy. If anything, it has a long standing overconsumption problem.
The relationship between dairy/meat and inflammation is more nuanced than that. While some studies show associations with inflammatory markers, others find neutral or even anti-inflammatory effects depending on the type (e.g., grass-fed vs grain-fed, fermented vs non-fermented dairy) and individual metabolic context.
You're right that ratios matter enormously, but optimal ratios vary significantly by individual - genetics, activity level, metabolic health, and existing conditions all play roles. The overconsumption concern is valid for processed meats and in the context of sedentary lifestyles with excess calories, but the picture is less clear for whole-food animal proteins in balanced diets.
The real issue might be less about meat/dairy per se and more about displacement of other beneficial foods (fiber, polyphenols, etc) and overall dietary patterns. Many Americans do overconsume calories generally, but some subpopulations (elderly, athletes, those on restricted diets) may actually benefit from more protein.
why is meat inflammatory? is it they way it's farmed/raised?
because we have teeth specifically designed to get meat off bones and animals that don't eat meat and weren't "designed to" don't have teeth designed to clean meat off bones. and that's just one i came up with, off the cuff.
if it's current farming practices that make the meat/dairy bad for us, then fix that. But i don't currently believe there's a greater health benefit to taking a ton of supplements to replace the missing nutrients that meat and dairy give us that you absolutely cannot get from vegan diets without it becoming a monotonous pain in the neck.
> why is meat inflammatory? is it they way it's farmed/raised?
Not all meats are inflammatory. Processed and high temp cooked meats especially red are.
And I don't think we have the answer fully to why, but we know the lesser processed it is the better, and I believe I've seen some things about grass fed and all these more organically/traditional made meats seem to not be as inflammatory.
Also, we evolved during a period where we hunted, so even the idea of farmed meet maybe isn't really part of our evolution. But also, during our hunting evolution, we likely didn't have meat at every meals. Plus if you ever had game meat, it tastes really different and often isn't as good as what we farmed. So we kind of came to farm what tasted the best and was easy to farm, so it might be those meats aren't as good for us.
Also, you can't always assume that the environment we evolved in and the "natural" state is good for us. It wasn't bad enough for us to dwindle in numbers, but our population count was kept much lower than now and our life expectancies were shorter. As long as we made it to a healthy reproduction state evolution doesn't care. So all these inflammatory issues appear starting in your 30s and really become a problem much later in life. It's possible this didn't matter in evolutionary terms.
Lastly, you also have to take into context what else we'd do/eat. If our diets were more balanced than other things we would eat could neutralize some of that inflammation and meat has other vitamins and nutrients that are benefitial, but if someone cuts those other things out of their diet now the inflammation could become a problem.
So it's all more nuanced and complex.
I think they mean in the sense of pro-inflammatory. Which it very much is (especially red meat).
Some herbivores too have huge canines[0] for territorial fights. I used to use mine to fight my brother but now I'm settled they only help tearing appart coconut, cowliflower and seitan.
0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_deer
You can get all the nutrients you need, easily, from a vegan diet, with the exception of B12 (a cheap supplement will cover that).
Also, human ‘canines’ are pretty pathetic. They’ll do the job in getting meat off bones, sure, but are nothing compared with my dog’s teeth – he has proper canines. (He also doesn’t have to prepare and cook meat before tucking in. Humans are actually pretty lame meat eaters even in comparison to other omnivores like dogs, let alone carnivores like lions.)
vitamin D? unless you live within 10 degrees of the equator "the sun" is not a valid answer.
The most available form of vitamin D comes from extracting the oil from sheep's wool/skin using chemicals (soap is a chemical, for the record.) Yes, it is possible to get a much weaker form of D from mushrooms, but not as they arrive, regardless of packaging. they have to be left outside in the sun for at least 8 hours, but ideally "two full days in the sun", cap-side up (facing the sun), and then a standard mushroom will have enough D2 for the average adult, maybe. I don't know the specific conversion from D2 to calciferol or whatever.
And before anyone decides to cite 30ng/ml or whatever as "recommended", i disagree, 90-105ng/ml is more "ideal" and 500IU of vitamin D supplements aren't going to cut it. it's 1 IU per 10 grams of body mass (roughly).
i can do this all day, it's a waste of both of our time. As lovely as vegetarian/veganism is in the abstract, the entire planet cannot be vegan any more than the entire planet can subsist off insects.
That explains the great olympic track record of India.
I think generally people are optimizing for health outcome and longevity, not peak athletic performance at your prime age.
But also, I've seen people often assume vegetarian or vegan diets are "healthy". But many people in India for example will still eat a lot of refined carbs, added sugars, fat heavy deep fried foods, large volumes of ghee or seed oils, etc. And total avoidance of animal products can also mean you have some deficiencies in nutrients that can be hard to obtain otherwise.
A plant-forward diet is more specific, like the Mediterranean diet, which itself isn't at all how your average Mediterranean person eats haha. But it involves no processed foods, no added sugar or excessive sugar, diverse set of nutrients by eating a balance of veggies, legumes, nuts, seeds, meats, dairy, fish, and so on all in appropriate proportions, as well as keeping overall caloric intake relatively low.
It's quite hard to eat that way to be honest haha.
Look - what do you expect from the vegans? To like it? From that comment I hear the pure "horrors". Meat! Whole milk!!! Can you imagine such crime! Sorry, I couldn't hold myself.
"The first food group listed is literally meat and dairy."
that's because the pyramid is presented pointy end down.
You're literally just lying.
The first thing shown on the website is - broccoli.
The top of the pyramid includes both protein (meat, cheese) as well as fruits & vegetables.
The reason that meat is shown first is probably that it's the bigger change (it's been demonized in previous versions), whereas vegetables were always prominent.
The first thing on the website is indeed broccoli. But the first thing in the new inverted pyramid, both on the website and in other graphics of it, is meat. In fact, on the website, when you first get to "The New Pyramid", you'll first see only the left half, the one that has meat and other proteins; you'll have to scroll more to see the right half with vegetables and fruit.
I don't think it is meant to read left to right but top to bottom. Chicken and broccoli are top center, and that is the standard weight lifter meal plan. That said, human dietary needs vary individually by far more than any lobbied leaders will ever communicate.
The website is animated, so there's no question of which direction to read in, the left side literally pops up first lol. I can't lie, I miss websites that stood still, this could've just been a PDF.
BTW, you say "lobbied leaders" -- if you're talking about the scientists who have their names on this report, you'd be very correct. The "conflicting interests" section has loads of references to the cattle and dairy industries.
The only difference from the previous guidance is that it's suggesting eating more meat and dairy, which would come at the expense of veggies, legumes, nuts and seeds.
To be honest, I don't totally disagree from a practical angle. I think we have to acknowledge that most Americans failed to eat large portions of non-processed veggies, legumes, nuts and seeds. The next best thing might be to tell them, ok, at least if you're going to eat meat and dairy in large portions, make sure it's non-processed.
I've found for myself, it's hard to eat perfectly, but it's easier to replace processed foods and added sugar with simpler whole meats, fish and healthy fats like avocado, eggs, etc. And since those have higher satiety it helps with calorie control and so you avoid eating more snacks and treats which are heavily processed and sugary.
That said, in a purely evidence based health sense, it's not as good as the prior ratios from what I've seen of the research.
And that's going to dictate nationwide purchasing policies for things the the 30 million school lunch meals, million prisoners...
This is worth millions of dollars a day and we're sold it as common wisdom from the mom and pop country doctor.
Kids in the US will no longer be served reheated pizza and chocolate milk?
Whatever the incentives, go for it
the rectangular pizzas were never "reheated". i have copies of the recipe cards to make enough trays of pizza to feed a school using the industrial kitchen appliances they have in schools.
and whatever your issue is with chocolate milk, can you link a recent survey that shows the percentage of say, americans, that have had 1 or more glasses of water in the last month? a glass being at least 8floz (1/4 liter or so)
i'm leaning toward "most people don't drink enough, if any, water; furthermore most people are probably varying levels of dehydrated", at least in the US. The fad of carrying water with you everywhere was lambasted into obscurity, at least in the american south. Anecdotally, many people have told me they drink 64 ounces a day, because diet coke counts and so does beer.
that a kid is getting a fortified delicious drink they enjoy is fine by me.
In a lot of schools "industrial equipment" is used to reheat frozen foods.
As for chicolate milk: there's probably as much added sugar in it as in a can of Cola. Definitely not something kids should consume daily.
>As for chicolate milk: there's probably as much added sugar in it as in a can of Cola
There's no way this is true, so I looked up nutrition facts-
A 12oz can of coke has 39g added sugars and chocolate milk has 6 grams added sugars for the small cartons they have at schools.
This is the first chocolate milk I found - https://www.kleinpeterdairy.com/products/fresh-delicious-mil...
In other words, coke has more than six times the added sugar as chocolate milk in containers that they are readily available in.
Btw, Mountain Dew has 46 grams sugar per can.
According to https://www.usdairy.com/news-articles/how-much-sugar-is-in-m...
Milk Sugar Content (per 8 oz. serving): 24 grams sugar (12 grams natural sugar, 12 grams added sugar)
According to https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/food-types/how-does-su...:
So one small carton they have at school has 30% of an adult's daily intake of added sugar.What's your point? What does that have anything to do with the comment you're responding to?
My point is that no, chocolate milk isn't healthy at all.
But that wasn't your point at all. You said:
> As for chicolate milk: there's probably as much added sugar in it as in a can of Cola.
Your own follow-up comment proved this to be false. No need to dig in further.
And here in largely vegetarian India, everyone is now pushing for more protein and meats because a vegetable-heavy diet has been awful for our public health
If you want to actually get full and satiated with a largely vegetarian diet, you will eventually resort to carbs
And this is for a culture that really knows how to make smashingly good vegetarian dishes
I love my vegetables, but a vegetable-heavy diet is clearly not something that everyone can or should do. The people I know who retain their health with vegetarian/vegan diets are usually really well-versed in nutrition
Carbs and butter.
If you look at a lot of the indian vegetarian dishes you'll find things like potatoes fried in butter being a staple.
Chickpeas and yogurt do make a showing, but a lot of indian dishes are devoid of vegetarian protein sources. You need a lot more beans/nuts if you want to eat healthy as a vegetarian.
Even if Indians ate 2x the meat that they do now, they wouldn’t consume anywhere as much as Americans do. Increasing meat consumption in America is not necessary.
India would do well to consume more protein, and the US would do well to consume less
has your government published any science on this? being completely serious, i'd like to read it. Is India mostly vegetarian because of lack of access to farms/meats, religious reasons, financial, or what? I didn't know it was largely vegetarian. I don't know i had an idea of the ratio or that it would be different than any other country.
Apparently the Mediterranean also is largely vegetarian. at least the eponymous diet is.
Most branches of hinduism condemn meat eating, so this has created a significant pressure against meat production (same as you'll find little production of pork in the Middle East and North Africa). This is not universal, of course, because historically many regions of India had large meat-eating muslim populations as well.
Note that this is typically lacto-ovo-vegetarianism, not veganism.
Maybe home cooking is, but every restaurant meal I bhave eaten near the Mediterranean had seafood or cheese in it.
Edit: you said vegetarian not vegan, and yeah lot of pasta dishes are vegetarian but not vegan.
Well if you cook the vegetables in litres of ghee that’ll happen.
If you don't cook vegetables in plenty of fats, you will end up feeling unsatiated - at least the vast majority would if that's their only meal
Salads are great, but eat them 7x a week for 2x meals a day and most will end up binge eating some absolute trash just to feel full
The last corrupted version had the same person at its head.
>but is at least closer to truth then [than?] the last corrupted version
I'm pretty sure you did the rhetorical equivalent of looking at a roomful of pregnant high school girls..
.. and declaring one of them to be closest to virginity.
I fail to see the significance of your link to a group that opposes animal experimentation asking RFK Jr to reduce animal experimentation. Did you paste the wrong URL For the first link?
RFK is a retarded public health menace but him saying high protein low carb/low fat diet is generally good isn't retarded and only fat fricks would get mad about it
The original food pyramid was based on a world crafted by calory deficit and worked for it's time, but in a life of excess it causes mass obesity which is partly why americans are so fricking fat.
Isn't every single policy a result of some kind of lobby group? Are you saying that it's corrupt because it's been influenced by a lobby group? Would all policies then be corrupt to some degree? Or is it corrupt because you disagree with the lobby group?
Not all lobby groups are asking for harmful things. But nearly always they act in their own short sighted self interest. Which usually comes at the expense of citizens or the would be customers or competitors.
Which is why sane countries make paying for access and influence illegal.
So, that would be corrupt because you don't agree with it then?
Which are these sane countries? How do you think lobbying should work then? Everyone should get equal access? Hunter and gatherer man was egalitarian like that. Afaik it is a universal feature of civilization that this eventually breaks down. Of all the existent modes of dealing with this problem, money is probably one of the better ones compared to some historical or even contemporary alternatives. I actually will be very surprised if you come up with a single country that credibly makes "paying for access and influence illegal" as that is pretty much the history of all of human civilization, but I would welcome being surprised.
I'm a realist. All these comments were saying "oh this is good they're doing this for my personal health" and I thought "oh, no no no. That's not how this works..."
Why do the two have to be mutually exclusive though? Why can't something healthy also not also happen to benefit corporations/lobby groups?
If something was beneficial to shareholders and to everyone else, it already happened.
The irony is Tyson's is an absolutely horrendous organization and ruins food left and right. Not to mention the absurd living conditions for the animals they feed us.
Did you mistakenly mean to reference Canada's highly corrupt as hell food guide?
https://food-guide.canada.ca/en/
Ctrl+F'd and didn't see any of those words mentioned a single time either. What a corrupt country Canada is.
You probably can't change politics, but you can use them for a good end.
Right off the bat, "prioritizing protein" is already smelling.
There's some real science there for a couple of reasons. Protein is a macronutrient you can be malnourished if you don't get enough of even if you eat enough calories and the right micronutrients, and if most of your calories are from protein then you're actually probably not getting as many "burnable" calories as you think you are because (1) the amount of protein you need to meet your daily protein needs never enters the citric acid cycle to oxidized for ATP regeneration, (2) protein is the macronutrient that feels the most filling, and (3) excess protein that goes to the liver to be converted into carbs loses around 30% of its net usable calories due to the energy required for that conversion.
The way we count calories is based on how many calories are in a meal vs the resulting scat, and that just isn't an accurate representation of how the body processes protein such that a protein-heavy diet doesn't have as many calories as you probably think it does, which makes it a healthy choice in an environment where most food-related health problems stem from overeating.
However I agree with your skepticism insofar as when they say "prioritizing protein" they probably mean "prioritizing meat," which is more suspect from a health standpoint and looks somewhat suspicious considering the lobbyists involved.
Most Americans get plenty of protein without trying. It's hard to see how eating more meat should help unless you think the amount of protein actually needed is much more than what the May Clinic thinks: https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speak...
The "without trying" people probably aren't going to make much use of a food pyramid anyway. The guidelines are more aimed at people who will try.
cmon, this is just stupid
the "industry" obviously makes much more money on "highly processed" and branded foods - more intermediaries, more profits & margins
literally everyone can compete freely in the "whole unprocessed foods" market, and the only real differentiating factors will be quality & taste (as it should be)
Is lobbying the same as corruption?
Would you say the same thing about the covid vaccination campaigns during the Biden administration? Because billions of dollars were poured into those as well, with record profits for big pharma.
>Tyson foods and other meatpacking companies lobbied and funded RFK.
So? They are fighting fire with fire.
Or should sugar,casino and tobacco industries have all the lobbying
Also this doesn't surpass the minimal threshold for being shocked anymore, there's more critical shit going on, I can't be here being outraged at checks notes meat companies pushing that meat is healthy
In capitalism you kinda are supposed to make money by providing good value in most of the case.
The fact that people lobby to make more money from good food rather than sugar/fat crap is a good thing not a bad one
Of note: the US's per capita consumption of meat has increased by more than 100 pounds over the last century[1]. We now consume an immense amount of meat per person in this country. That increase is disproportionately in poultry, but we also consume more beef[2].
A demand for the average American to eat more meat would have to explain, as a baseline, why our already positive trend in meat consumption isn't yielding positive outcomes. There are potential explanations (you could argue increased processing offsets the purported benefits, for example), but those are left unstated by the website.
[1]: https://www.agweb.com/opinion/drivers-u-s-capita-meat-consum...
[2]: https://ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/chart-detai...
> the US's per capita consumption of meat
That number seemed unreal to me, so I looked it up. I think it represents the total pre-processing weight, not the actual meat meat consumption. From Wikipedia:
> As an example of the difference, for 2002, when the FAO figure for US per capita meat consumption was 124.48 kg (274 lb 7 oz), the USDA estimate of US per capita loss-adjusted meat consumption was 62.6 kg (138 lb)
Processing, cutting into sellable pieces, drying, and spoilage/loss mean the amount of meat consumed is about half of that number.
Interestingly, ~12% of humans in the US are responsible for ~50% of beef consumption.
> The US is the biggest consumer of beef in the world, but, according to new research, it’s actually a small percentage of people who are doing most of the eating. A recent study shows that on any given day, just 12% of people in the US account for half of all beef consumed in the US.
> Men and people between the ages of 50 and 65 were more likely to be in what the researchers dubbed as “disproportionate beef eaters”, defined as those who, based on a recommended daily 2,200 calorie-diet, eat more than four ounces – the rough equivalent of more than one hamburger – daily. The study analyzed one-day dietary snapshots from over 10,000 US adults over a four-year period. White people were among those more likely to eat more beef, compared with other racial and ethnic groups like Black and Asian Americans. Older adults, college graduates, and those who looked up MyPlate, the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) online nutritional educational campaign, were far less likely to consume a disproportionate amount of beef.
High steaks society: who are the 12% of people consuming half of all beef in the US? - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/20/beef-usd... - October 20th, 2023
Demographic and Socioeconomic Correlates of Disproportionate Beef Consumption among US Adults in an Age of Global Warming - https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/15/17/3795 | https://doi.org/10.3390/nu15173795 - August 2023
(my observation of this is that we can sunset quite a bit of US beef production and still be fine from a food supply and security perspective, as consumption greatly exceeds healthy consumption limits in the aggregate)
> A recent study shows that on any given day, just 12% of people in the US account for half of all beef consumed in the US
By itself, this figure doesn't really mean much. On any given day, less than 1% of people have birthdays, but that doesn't mean there's a small percentage of people who are having most of the birthdays
The following paragraph is more valid, but the 12% figure still seems dubious.
That sounds a lot like the "you only use 10% of your brain" saying. Yeah, 10% at any given moment.
I'm sorry but is nobody reading TFA? It quite specifically is saying there's a population of disproportionate meat eaters, noting that they're older, they're whiter, and influenced by cultural traditions normalizing it.
It's not just saying it pops out of the data as a statistical curiosity, it's saying that there is a real subset of the population who are disproportionately eating more beef.
> By itself, this figure doesn't really mean much. On any given day, less than 1% of people have birthdays, but that doesn't mean there's a small percentage of people who are having most of the birthdays
Yeah, it just means that half the beef eaten per day goes to the 12% having a BBQ, etc, not that only 12% of the population have access to half the beef available each day
Do you have a BBQ on 12% of days? Is this how it goes in America?
i'm over 40; this is anecdotal, but I've talked to a lot of people all over the country; however i'm not asserting this is 100% factual:
in the US most days include a meat in at least 1 meal. Now, i'm framing this as "fish, eggs, fowl". Cereal with milk, bagel with cream cheese, not meat, but meat adjacent. Waffles have eggs. we love "deli meats" in the US, every store has a deli counter where you can get meat sliced right before your own eyes; or you can go to the 4-8 door cold case where the pre-sliced meats are. And dinner, well i can think of a couple of vegetarian dishes that are "staples" like red beans and rice (can be vegan/vegetarian), or pasta with marinara (vegetarian).
When presented with something like the Mediterranean diet, most americans would balk at the bird and rabbit food they were now expected to eat.
I can expand, but yes, meat is like, a huge deal in the US. Especially beef. part of it is our chicken and pork is kinda bland and merely "just food" but our beef ranges from "ok if i'm real hungry" to "really very good, actually". Fish is hit and miss, depends where you live in the US as to how popular it is. also most of the cow is used for food in the US, very little is wasted, to my understanding. brain, eyes, tongue, glands, lungs, etc are all sold, bones sold as fertilizer, hide is obviously leather, and so on.
for the record i wish animals were treated better, in fact, i have been searching for a local beef farmer for a decade and all the ones i run in to sell their beef to texas!
gp is likely referring to a specific diet called The Mediterranean Diet, "inspired by the eating habits and traditional foods of Greece, Italy, and the Mediterranean coasts of France and Spain, as observed in the late 1950s to early 1960s."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_diet
I think most Americans would consider those foods very "exotic."
I was an adult before I ever ate chickpeas (in any form), really any beans outside of Taco Bell refried beans, eggplant (in any form), tzatziki, any sort of flatbread, lentils, avocado, zucchini, cauliflower. Etc.
Define BBQ; in the US it means two things depending on the location; Southern style slow cooked meat that falls apart on your fork, or grilling?
If you mean grilling, at least every 8 days! Hopefully more often than that! And what's the issue? I can cook indoors or outside the same meal but avoid the smoke and heating the house.
> A recent study shows that on any given day, just 12% of people in the US account for half of all beef consumed in the US.
This phrasing strongly suggests it’s not the same 12% every day. In which case… it’s probably not that noteworthy.
The phrasing strongly suggests exactly the opposite. Essentially, the whole framing of the linked guardian article is that there is a specific population which are the "disproportionate beef eaters".
The phrasing you’re looking for is that 12% of Americans consume an average of 50% of beef consumed every day.
By saying “on any given day” you are suggesting it’s a different 12%. The article does confuse this by identifying cohorts that eat more beef. But it’s a tautological label based on the survey data. They identify some correlates, like being a 50 something male. But there are males who are 50 something that don’t eat any beef. They’re not included in the 12%.
The 12% is just the outcome of the sample. It doesn’t mean they’re a consistent cohort.
Example:
* on any given day x million women give birth
* there are x million women who give birth every day
And from the study linked, that framing/suggestion would be incorrect (at least for the numbers given). "the 12% are not the same every day" is an accurate interpretation. They asked about what people ate _yesterday_...
Again, the whole premise of the article is that there really is such a thing as disproportionate beef eaters (DBE), and it spends time talking about this group explicitly. So the wording doesn't suggest otherwise, it explicitly suggests this is a real group.
Regarding the study this is a both can be true situation. There can be (1) a population who is disproportionate in their beef eating, and (2) a study about 12% doing the most on any given day can count in favor of that group being real and (3) not everyone from the daily 12% is part of the DBE group. It's more likely a venn diagram overlap, and where it doesn't overlap, people who aren't part of the DBE are incidentally in that 12% while being closer to average in the aggregate over the longer term. Those facts can all sit together comfortably without amounting to a contradiction.
is it normal, in the USA, for half of all people to only eat beef once every 8 days?
They also found a demographic correlation, which isn't easily explained by random sampling.
> is it normal, in the USA, for half of all people to only eat beef once every 8 days?
Thats not the implication of 12% of Americans eating 50% of beef by consumed by all Americans that day.
If I had to make up some numbers it’s probably that, on any random day, 12% of Americans ate 50% of the beef (a large burger), 28% of American ate the rest of the beef (bit of lunch meat), and 60% of Americans did not eat any beef.
> Interestingly, ~12% of humans in the US are responsible for ~50% of beef consumption.
Go on...
> One limitation of this work is that it was based on 1-day diet recalls, so our results do not represent usual intake[0].
Ah.
[0]: Demographic and Socioeconomic Correlates of Disproportionate Beef Consumption among US Adults in an Age of Global Warming https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/15/17/3795
> defined as those who, based on a recommended daily 2,200 calorie-diet, eat more than four ounces... daily.
This sounds like.. not very much. I eat 6-7oz of ground beef with breakfast alone, pretty much daily! Are people really eating less than ~1/2 cup of meat over all their meals combined?
> Are people really eating less than ~1/2 cup of meat over all their meals combined?
Your mind is going to be blown when you learn about vegetarians!
I'm in the US and was raised on a pretty standard diet. As a young adult, I stopped eating beef for environmental reasons. As an older adult (50s) I mostly stopped eating most meat for environmental and ethical reasons. I don't call myself a vegetarian and don't make a fuss when vegetarian options aren't available (eg, eating at a friend's house).
That is all to say: I haven't noticed any difference in my health either way, but that isn't why I (95%) stopped eating meat.
Beef, not meat. Surely you jest and you know that that's a huge amount and you're on some high-calorie gym diet?
6oz of beef is only 44g of protein; a moderate gym load would require more for many adult men. Typical might be more like 75-100g. (Recommendations I’ve heard is 2g per 1 kg of muscle mass; roughly 40% of your weight at moderate fitness.)
I’m a large guy (190cm/100kg); I lose weight eating a pound of bacon for breakfast and a pound of chicken for dinner, if I’m even moderately exercising (3x cardio, 3x strength each week). Thirty minutes a day, split between strength and cardio is hardly “top athlete” and more “recommended amount”.
That’s not to say anybody is wrong, merely our experiences may be as varied as humans are — ie, we may legitimately have different needs.
6oz of beef is only 44g of protein
It's their breakfast. Chances are rather small they don't get any protein intake for the rest of the day.
>ie, we may legitimately have different needs.
Well the point of nutrition research is to account for that kind of thing. And it's true enough that men and women have specifically different protein needs. But person-to-person variation doesn't scale up into pure randomness. The reason it's possible to make meaningful population level nutrition recommendations is precisely because of broadly shared commonalities, about what is both good and bad for us.
> That’s not to say anybody is wrong
Except the people hallucinating that we need to eat more meats. A couple of people requiring more caloric/protein intake doesn't make it reasonable for everyone to take in more
The advice to cut processed foods is solid and is something we have been saying for decades.
Due to digestion protein is also much lighter on calories then the baseline would suggest (15% less then the measured value can be typical) - dependent highly on preparation of course (I.e. the typical American steak prep of "first I'm adding half a stick of butter..." kind of ruins the benefit).
Habits vary (vegans exist!) And I agree 4 oz is a pretty small portion. But I don't think I personally know very many people who eat beef daily. For me and my family it is once or twice a week.
I know or knew (and at a time was one) who would eat a hamburger for lunch every day, day-in, day-out.
If you expand from that, it could easily be daily.
4 oz (a quarter pound) is 100 g or an amount about the size of the palm of your hand -- a single serving. It's not a small portion, it's recommended standard portion.
If you were following the old food guide in use for the last 20 years -- the one that replaces the food pyramid -- you'd see that 100 g is about a quarter of your plate. The old food guide could be summed up as "a quarter of your plate should be protein, a quarter carbs, and half fruits and vegetables". Real simple, so simple anyone could understand it. Although I have been presented with evidence recently that there are some who can not.
I eat meat (beef, pork, poultry, and fish) maybe three or four meals a week, and probably about 6 to 8 oz per meal when I eat it. So on a per day basis, yeah, I probably eat about 3-4 ounces of meat per day.
But the source you were quoting was about beef alone. So these are people who eat more beef daily than I eat of any meat.
Sometimes I wonder how is it possible that cattle alone severely outweighs all livestock on the planet, and by a very huge margin (like 10 to 1), then I read about such dietary habits.
I eat meat too, but I don't eat it every day so if you average it over time it will likely be around those numbers.
Your diet is your own business of course, but a burger for breakfast is… unusual, right?
Not a burger: ground beef and eggs scrambled, with potatoes and whatever fruit-of-the-week on the side. Yes it's a post-gym meal :)
I'm not sure "gym goer" defines the "average American " :).
So I think you can consider your regular breakfast to be an outlier with regard to beef consumption.
Outliers are more likely to post their experiences, and those unusual experiences are then also more likely to be shared. It can make for a skewed perception of the world if someone consumes a lot of media (or other secondhand information) and allows it to shape their worldview.
And to your point, I think the psychology of someone in the comment section is to react to broad statements like they are Sudoku puzzle where you can "solve" by finding an exception to a broad statement, however rare the exception.
The administration putting out the "eat more meat" guidance is simultaneously telling everyone they need to work out. The recommendation seems consistent when their started goal is to change current "American" habits.
ground beef can be more things than a burger.
every breakfast joint near me in California has some sort of variation on hamburg steak & eggs. Judging by the fact that it's on every menu, it must be popular to some degree.
> ground beef can be more things than a burger.
I was thinking more as a unit of measurement, but yeah, sorry that was poorly written on my part, sorry.
> every breakfast joint near me in California has some sort of variation on hamburg steak & eggs. Judging by the fact that it's on every menu, it must be popular to some degree.
Sure. The diners near me have that kind of stuff too, just, if I went to a diner every morning my heart would probably revolt after about a month.
People go to "breakfast joints" for a weekend treat, not an everyday meal.
A burger is close to a sausage McMuffin which I'm sure some percentage eat for brekky every day.
I haven't had any meat in about 20 years. But I also don't live in the US.
There is a substantial body of evidence that much red meat is wildly not good for you, especially when you consume it as consistently as you're saying you do.
There’s a substantial body of evidence that consuming the average American diet while also being mostly sedentary is terrible for you. I’m unclear how much of the data gathered about red meat specifically can be meaningfully decoupled from all the confounding factors, though.
A study of people who eat almost exclusively whole foods that do not include red meat vs people who eat almost exclusively whole foods that do include meaningful amounts of red meat would be really interesting.
When so much red meat is consumed as greasy burgers coupled with white bread buns and deep fried potatoes, I don’t know how to decouple the impact of the red meat from the rest of it. I fear the “red meat bad” stuff might be the inverse of the “oh, it’s clearly the wine” silliness for why French people are healthier.
Don’t drink water, if you drink too much, it’ll kill you!
You don't think studies control for this?
I believe that they try to, but I have serious doubts about how effective it is. Dietary science is littered with examples of incorrect guidance driven by data we misinterpreted. Remember when a generation of people were told to eat low fat and they all got fatter? Remember trans fats replacing saturated? Remember when we told everyone that drinking alcohol in moderation was healthier than not drinking at all?
Most dietary studies are observational, which means there is no control group and no blinding. It’s a deep dive into data (largely self-reported) with an attempt to control the endless variables by slicing and dicing the data to hopefully end up with groups that can be meaningfully compared.
There are plenty of studies that take place outside north america saying the same thing.[1], for example. If you insist on this not being true thats fine, everyone gets to think whatever they want, but you're clearly not supported by the data in saying so.
[1]https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1741-7015-11-63?ut...
This is exactly what I’m talking about. You cited a study that does not support the claim that red meat is unhealthy.
> After correction for measurement error, higher all-cause mortality remained significant only for processed meat
This is in the abstract. You don’t even have to open the actual report to see this. Without even getting into whether or not this study controlled correctly for all possible variables, even they themselves had to acknowledge that the link between red meat and mortality is at best weak.
There is so much of this sort of misinterpretation when it comes to dietary science that it’s really hard to know what information is accurate and what information is being misrepresented or misunderstood.
That's 4 ounces of beef, not meat. I eat plenty of meat, but eat beef less than once a week.
Wow! That's feels like a lot to me. I take 7 days to consume 450g (~1 US lb) of pork. I eat maybe 120g of beef in a month.
Are you really eating nearly half a pound of beef for breakfast every morning? I have, like, some toast and cheese.
So you have effectively zero protein with breakfast, are you eating four chicken breasts for dinner or something? Or are you protein-deficient.. if so, it seems the guidance in OP is meant to correct people like you.
Doesn’t cheese have protein?
My diet is light on carbs and has plenty of protein. I don’t think I’m deficient.
Four chicken breasts would be something like a pound and a half of meat. That seems excessive.
I only mentioned it because I really struggled with hitting protein targets unless I made sure I had a good portion of meat with every meal.
In OP, they say "Protein target: ~0.54–0.73 grams per pound of body weight per day". Given that an average male weighs 200lbs in the US[1], we're looking for 108-146g protein/day. If your protein only comes from chicken breasts, and given that an average (52g) chicken breast has 16g of protein[2], you'd have to eat 8 chicken breasts per day to fulfill those requirements. Factoring in your other meat (something with lunch, and a bit from other sources like cheese), if you skip meat in your breakfast, yeah, you'd need like four with dinner to hit targets.
Your diet is your business of course, but I'd consider tracking your diet for a few days to see how the numbers add up.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/body-measurements.htm
[2] values for "1 unit", whatever that is: https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/food-details/171477/nutrients
I don't know where "1 unit" comes from, but the Portion menu lists 1 unit as 52g, and 0.5 breast as 86g. So 1 unit is about one third of one. Using the numbers on that site, you'd need 2-2.7 average skinless breasts to reach the target 108-146g, which is a lot more reasonable. And that assumes there's zero other protein being consumed.
I hope your numbers were more accurate when you determined you were struggling with hitting targets....
Oh yeah that's odd. What a weird measurement. Maybe a "serving" is considered a third?
No, I bought a kitchen scale and did everything by weight, it seemed like the only sensical solution. This is probably a good time to plug Cronometer! I'm not affiliated, just been a happy paying customer for a few years now. https://cronometer.com/
This business of "1 unit" is certainly making a good case for using a scale. Thanks for the link.
So the data is skewed by burgers georg who eats 3,000 Big Macs each day?
We are Paraguayans... Argentinians, and Brazilians... but mostly Paraguayans and Argentinas
https://idlewords.com/2006/04/argentina_on_two_steaks_a_day....
"just 12% of people in the US account for half of all beef consumed in the US."
what???? there is entire family that eat entire Cow that can feed the whole village, that is crazy
Drying doesn't mean anything... The nutrients are still there you're only really losing water.
What evidence do you have that the loss adjusted numbers have gone down while the preprocessed numbers have gone up so dramatically?
> Drying doesn't mean anything... The nutrients are still there you're only really losing water.
The problem with the number is that people see it and imagine pounds of meat like they see at the grocery store, but it's measuring pounds of meat that go into the meat processing plant.
> What evidence do you have that the loss adjusted numbers have gone down while the preprocessed numbers have gone up so dramatically?
No, the two numbers show the ratio.
The "pounds of meat consumed per person" from the FAO is a pre-processed weight.
The pounds of meat consumed per person from the USDA is the end-user weight. It's about half of the FAO number.
Well if it’s based on weight, and one of the steps is to reduce the weight significantly…
Point being someone eating a couple bags of jerky over a workday would probably count as having eaten literal pounds of beef, despite consumed weight being much lower. Water is noncompressible and makes your stomach full very quickly.
> Point being someone eating a couple bags of jerky over a workday would probably count as having eaten literal pounds of beef
For the purposes of this conversation, about the nutritional effect of your diet, that seems like a fair way to put it.
I'm a weightlifter and as part of my training, I eat pretty close to about a pound of meat a day during bulk, usually about 12-14oz. This is because I need to eat about 200g of protein a day. I supplement it with protein shakes.
I find that to be a challenging amount of meat. It's a lot! And to find out that's average???
Americans eat way too much meat. Cheese, too.
The number quoted is the pre-processing weight. A lot of mass is lost during processing, drying, aging, in transport, to spoilage, and so on.
The real number for meat consumption at the end consumer is about half that amount.
The thing is though you’ll be eating (I presume) mostly lean meat. Chicken breast, white fish etc.
When you compare the macros of that to sausages or ribs or even steak it’s quite drastically different.
Also I’d guess you aren’t covering your meat in thick sugary sauce every time…
I am not a weightlifter, I am an amateur powerlifter, and I do pretty intense resistance training for my age (54yo) and my weight (112kg) and I eat about 800g to 1kg a day of meat - duck, pork or beef. Even if I eat 1kg Wagyu beef, it would give me about 3000 calories, slightly less than 3500 calories I need to keep my muscle mass. I would happily eat even more meat but circumstances prevents me to do so.
I used to drink protein shakes, but now I am actively against these. Artificial sweeteners provoke insulin release [1] [2] that leads to type-II diabetes.
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2887503/
[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10568...
you can get protein powder that doesn't contain artificial sweeteners. You can get protein powder that doesn't contain any sweetener. You can even buy pure protein powder without any additives at all.
thanks for the dietary advice, b00ty4breakfast
Your best evidence is a rat study and a narrative review?
Kinda makes zero cal sweeteners look good.
It is hard to experiment on humans. Here is an experiment on monkeys: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39978336/
At least aspartame increases insulin secretion in them.
You can get protein powder without flavoring. I drink that either pure or with a little bit of flavored protein mixed in (something like 3:1) because the flavored stuff is so sweet I can't drink it. Some brands I could literally do 3 parts flavorless, 1 part flavored and it would still taste too sweet.
Why you get protein powder of unknown origin instead of the meat?
The origin is not unknown.
It's convenient. I have no idea where the meat came from either.
Whey has the same origin as beef meat you know?
Yeah, they both come from Costco.
And from cow, ultimately.
I guess it's a matter of perspective and what you're used to. Some indigenous North American peoples used to subsist largely on bison for at least part of the year and often consumed 5 pounds or more of meat and other animal products per day. Was that too much?
I too try for 200g of protein/day, with meat and supplements by shakes. It’s difficult to eat more meat than that, because of how it fills you up, its prep requirements and its cost.
I don’t believe that the average American eats nearly a pound of meat per day. I do believe if the average American ate meat before carbs, we could get there, and all be a lot healthier, though.
For me, processed carbs make me much hungrier, but the kale salad I’m eating right now makes me less hungry.
200g a day? Are you a big guy? I did an experiment in my 20s on building muscle on a plant based diet, and managed to gain 10kg in one year (muscle mass, confirmed by a DEXA scan). Total weight gain was about 16kg. Most of the surplus was water.
I started at 70kg (181cm), so pretty skinny, and without prior resistance training. I ate between 120and 140g of protein per day, without any shakes.
I am aware that these gains would not have continued, but my body obviously had more than enough with 130g to build muscle. I did eat a calorie surplus, but
200g seems like A LOT.
The latest in body building science recommends 1g of protein per day per 1lb of body mass (or 2.2g per 1kg for metric folks).
How did you do that in a plant based diet? What were your largest sources of protein? (To be clear: I'm doubting that you did it. I am genuinely curious.)> The latest in body building science recommends 1g of protein per day per 1lb of body mass (or 2.2g per 1kg for metric folks).
I wasn't that serious about the whole thing, but I read somewhere that the benefits decline rapidly after 1.6g/kg bodyweight. That was the reason I didn't do any shakes.
> How did you do that in a plant based diet
Beans and whole grains. I realized that fat intake was limiting my protein access so I cut fat down do between 10 and 20% of energy intake. That means you have to chew down a whole lot of bulgur and beans. I ate about 3000 calories (I do a lot of swimming) and then you only need about 18% of energy from protein to reach 140g. Easy peasy.
I also made my own firm tofu (i was cheap). I could easily eat 200g of tofu a day.
Definitely possible - I used to get 100g easily. Simple example would be some granola (with lots of nuts/seeds) with soya milk for breakfast, big tofu scramble for lunch, poki bowl with lots of veg, edamame and tempeh for dinner. You could probably just do this with big portions to get to 130 tbh.
I think this is person dependant. A Kale salad makes almost no impact on my hunger, but a piece of bread makes me feel pretty full.
Just as an example of an opposite experience.
(american, vegetarian for 13 years, athletic, former meat eater, long carb centric diet that i'm trying to change)
This is very true, and something that people pushing keto (myself included) had to learn the hard way.
There are satiety indexes for different foods but they are not universal. I can eat almost unlimited carbs and never feel full. I'll eat multiple plates full of bread or a thousand calories in french fries and then move on to the main course.
6oz of lean meat and some salad and I'm good with 500 or so calories on my plate.
I honestly don't get how potatoes supposedly fill people up. I have made twice baked potatoes before and eaten an easy 2000 calories of them along side thanksgiving dinner.
In contrast right now I'm eating clean and doing a body recomp. Eating clean is super satiating, for me at least!
> I have made twice baked potatoes before and eaten an easy 2000 calories of them along side thanksgiving dinner.
Try plain boiled potatoes. I bet you feel like stopping long before 2000 Calories. Tasty things are tasty and often easy to eat an unhealthy amount of.
This is the thing that makes any conversation about broad categories of food difficult—there’s just a huge range of ways to package those carbs, and people eat a ton of “hyper palatable” foods. A few hundred calories of Smartfood popcorn with a day’s worth of sodium and addicting flavors is quite different in my experience than, say, a few slices of chewy, crusty sourdough bread.
Right. My wife doesn't feel full unless she has protein. I don't feel full unless I have a bunch of carbs. It makes life interesting.
Well, if you've ever cooked down a cabbage or spinach or whatever, you'll see it basically takes up no space whatsoever... so yeah, kale on its own will take a while to fill you up.
Maybe true! I eat a bunch (like the formal term of 1 unit) of kale in my daily salad. That seems to be enough, alongside some Greek yogurt and blueberries to maintain me for a few hours.
Can’t help eating junk carbs when I see them, though.
I cut out mammal products and replaced with plant protein like lentils and wild rice.
I can eat 200g of lentil noodles in a sitting.
I've been cooking more with lentils as well, so many cheap tasty recipes. I've been following this chickpea hack (cooking in microwave for like 5ish) to great success. Microwaving the chickpeas splits them into a crispy texture, then after that it's very flexible to create all kinds of dishes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EU76q3Vf3Q
My favorite is pan frying them in a hot sauce + aromatics for a quick chickpea rice bowl, I even gotten into the habit of using chickpeas as a chicken replacement for many of my Mexican dishes.
If you're use to the typical American diet, please try cooking more lentils! Very tasty, filling dishes, low on costs and high on nutrients.
chicken 100g/27g of protein
chickpeas 100g/19g of protein
That's a good ratio for something that costs less than a dollar a can compared to chicken.
fwiw at the level of protein i need to eat to build muscle mass (im weight training 3x a week), even that 27 vs 19 difference starts to become a problem.
people don't realize how challenging it is to eat 200g of protein a day, every day, for months, without eating like 3000cal lol
that said, i do eat a lot of plant based protein. i love chickpeas and i also fuck w tofu a lot.
There’s a pretty versatile and tasty milk product called tvoroh in eastern/Central Europe. It has about 18g of protein, and 0-10% fat depending on what you’re buying. So for low fat options it can be as low as 70-90kkal/100g with 18g of protein.
What is the problem of consuming say 80-100% of whey protein? Not all of it has sweeteners.
> What is the problem of consuming say 80-100% of whey protein?
Well, for starters, that'd be completely fucking joyless. And on top of that, meat contains other nutrients that I'd have to account for (which is not hard tbh, but requires a little bit of studying and planning).
> tasty milk product called tvoroh
My gallbladder has never been at 100% and as a result, I have to eat a relatively low fat diet. This is not something a normal person faces. I eat a fair amount of low fat greek yogurt, though. Similar concept.
(I am from Eastern Europe). "Tvorog" / "Творог" is almost identical to commonly available cottage cheese. I buy the latter in big tubs from Costco and eat it almost every day for breakfast (with whatever fruits are on hand, or with raisins and nuts in the worst case).
Yeah, I actually learned how to make it myself, although it requires access to kefir/piimä, or making it yourself first. Once you have it, it’s very easy to make it, although often unnecessary when local eastern shops have it quite cheap.
Not sure about availability in the US, in EU cottage cheese often is sold as much more creamy spread, like Philadelphia cheese.
You may be calling it "quark" then? From a quick search:
"The two most common translations of tvorog are cottage cheese (common in the US) and quark (common in Germany). The process of making these different cheeses is quite similar: you take fermented, acidized or sour milk, and separate the curds from the whey. For cottage cheese, cream is added to the curds before they’re packaged, and for quark, the curds are not overly dried so the curds come out quite soft and creamy. Tvorog, on the other hand, is most often packaged as dry grainy pieces of curd."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzsEqV0Bjcs - that lecture refers a simple formulae to compute protein content from the amount of nitrogen. They count nitrogen in grams, then multiply by 6 to get amount of "available" protein. But, any antinutrients such as cyanides will count as proteins by this calculation.
Lentils contain trypsin inhibitors, which contain inordinate amount of nitrogen that is counted as protein.
While you do not eat these directly after cooking your lentils, you do not eat as much protein as you would think you do.
lentils carb/protein ratio isn't great. you still need to supplement it with protein (whey or pea). i eat a fair amount of lentils, but mostly as a carb source (like white rice). even tofu's ratio isn't good enough. i do eat a lot of tofu though, because i like it
back of the hand math suggests id have to eat a kg of dry lentils a day to reach my protein requirements. that's gotta be what, 2800 cal? edit: 800g of lentils for 200g of protein, 2500 cal.
im just thinking out loud here, but lentils alone wouldn't be adequate for me.
You would just eat more protein dense plant foods like tempeh, extra firm tofu, and seitan which is the most protein dense food.
If the only food in your pantry were seitan, you’d have to eat 260g (960cal) of it to hit 200g protein. It’s not that much food.
Most people haven’t tried it but asian stores may sell it next to tofu as “vegan chicken/beef”. It has a nice texture that you can cube and treat like chicken in a stir fry.
I eat it weekly.
Tofu's ratio is really good, though? I can get 162kcal/18g of protein tofu here. Anything where P*10 > KCAL is a very good protein source, imo.
> 800g of lentils for 200g of protein, 2500 cal.
> im just thinking out loud here, but lentils alone wouldn't be adequate for me.
This seems in line with maintenance calories for a moderately active man, am I missing something?
If the goal is both strength training, cardio, and both weight gain and building muscle mass to competitive levels, then that can be not enough.
Depends on "adequate". The average western diet over-consumes protein.
I started tracking everything I ate, every single bite.
The average western diet may over consume meat, but I have to work my butt off to hit my protein goals for strength training.
A slice of bacon has 3g of protein. 150 calories though. Eating enough protein through bacon isn't the best of ideas, even if someone is doing a ketogenic diet!
60-80g of protein is about right for a man who has a moderately physical job or who exercises some small amount. 100g is the minimum for putting on muscle and getting stronger.
The average western diet over consumes everything, it could do with less sugar, less processed foods (which are hyper palatable and don't satiate hunger), and more pure protein.
Why are you quoting raw protein grams instead of using a g/kg of body weight metric?
Because American men average around five nine and given the average lean muscle mass needs on that frame size, something within 60-90g (which is a huge range!) will work for most American men.
Like if someone is a 6 foot 10 body builder, they know their needs.
Also the suggested range of g/kg ranges from .8g/kg to 1.2g/kg, which is also a huge range, but that is primarily for building strength, not maintaining.
Given the goals here are "rough guidelines on eating healthy", I'm fine saying most men should aim for 60-90g of lean protein a day. That isn't exactly a hot take.
> strength training
why do you think you need to do that? most people don't.
Most people experience severe mobility problems in old age that would likely have been preventable by strength training.
That question is, honestly, kind of stupid. It is akin to asking why eat healthy or why go outside in the sun.
But hey, here we go.
1. Intense physical exercise is the only known way to increase IQ. (Admittedly pure strength training is not the best for this, HIIT workouts are better)
2. Muscle mass is a huge factor in the early death in seniors. Basically people who lack muscle mass are more likely to fall over and fracture something, at which point they are much more likely to die.
3. Lean muscle mass, up to a certain point (e.g. extreme body builders have worse mortality numbers), decreases mortality across the board.
4. I like living w/o pain, and you can choose to either have your joints take the load or your muscles take the load.
5. I enjoy being able to move my body and be active in the world.
6. I'm vain and I like to look good.
> most people don't.
Most people in America die of a heart attack. Most people in America are obese and have troubles moving around. Most people in America don't read books. Most people in America don't enjoy mathematics. Most people in America don't go to art museums.
People should have aspirations to do more than average.
okay? i said "adequate for me", not "adequate for the average western person".
Lentils are about 9% protein by weight; that's only 18g of protein.
(Beef is about 25-30% protein by weight. Whey protein isolates are about 80% protein by weight.)
> mammal products
Makes me think of the song:
https://youtu.be/14jjo7MtSzE
I like that term. I assume that means you cut out beef, pork, mutton, goat, cheese, and milk but eat seafood and birds/eggs.
I may start that diet!
Depending on the type of training you're doing, you're likely eating lean meat too, like chicken breasts and fish. Most people are much less picky about the kind of meat they eat, opting for fatty cuts or meat products high in salt and saturated fats.
yes that's true
im probably more conscious about what i eat than the average person, just on virtue of watching macros lol
David Bars, while not even close to anything resembling a whole food, have made hitting macros so much easier. End up being cheaper than chicken, per gram of protein per calorie, sometimes too!
> And to find out that's average???
I think you’re conflating 200g of protein with 200g of meat that has protein.
They said “I eat pretty close to about a pound of meat a day during bulk, usually about 12-14oz”
A pound of meat is 450g of beef, which has about 110-140g of protein in it.
A 16oz ribeye can easily be eaten in a single meal by most people who are large enough (90kg) to need 200g of protein per day.
Would be important to see how that number is being computed? If it is the amount of meat sold divided by number of people it may be misleading since there is a fair amount of wastage particularly in places like schools etc with kids filling plates that are never consumed.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. There is even more trimming that goes on as well. Chefs trim what's ordered, tallow may be rendered for non-consumptive reasons, and so on. Like a poster above, as an athlete I eat more meat than most people, and I don't seem to eat those numbers... I feel like we are missing some data points.
Cheese is probably there due to lobbying. I don’t understand why it would be that high.
Cheese _is_ delicious.
(But I doubt the cheese I find so delicious is that same as the cheese that's so prevalent in American diets...)
Bodybuilder? Powerlifter? Curious what specifically you mean that requires you to bulk vs. cut
well im not bodybuilding anymore, so i guess im just in a constant bulk/caloric parity. i still think like that tho lol
Have you considered not bothering to bulk or cut and instead just maintain? Maybe you are saying that but I can’t tell. I lift 5-6 days a week but neither bulk nor cut. Just eating/consuming whatever is necessary to maintain and/or hit goals when I feel like it.
That's an immense amount of cholesterol. You might consider replacing some or all of it with plant-based sources. (Many protein shakes are made with whey powder, which also contains cholesterol.)
Heart disease is a real risk. Don't ignore it. It's not something that only happens to other people.
I'm not a weightlifter but I'm a carpenter. Meat is like a healing potion on my body. Makes the pain go away. And without meat, it doesn't.
Eggs work too.
I'm not a weightlifter, and 1lb steak (pre-cook weight) is a normal amd very reasonable sized dinner for me. Weird to hear that called "challenging".
TIL the amount of animal suffering that goes into each person trying to be swole.
The starting point for that data is 1909, when average life expectancy was under 50 years and child malnourishment was a major problem. The change since 1970 has been much quite modest: http://ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/chart-detai...
Also, you need to adjust for demographics. In 1900, 35% of the population was under 15: https://demographicchartbook.com/index.php/chapter-5-age-and.... Today it’s only 19%. Children and babies obviously eat a lot less meat than adults, and they make up a much smaller share of the population today than back then.
There’s a restaurant in Las Vegas, the Heart Attack Grill, which sarcastically plays on this trope.
> It has become internationally famous for embracing and promoting an unhealthy diet of incredibly large hamburgers. Customers are referred to as "patients," orders as "prescriptions," and the waitresses as "nurses." All those who weigh over 350 pounds are invited to unlimited free food provided they weigh themselves on an electronic cattle scale affront a cheering restaurant crowd.
> The menu includes the Single Bypass Burger®, Double Bypass Burger®, Triple Bypass Burger®, Quadruple Bypass Burger®, Quintuple Bypass Burger™, Sextuple Bypass Burger™, Septuple Bypass Burger™, and the Octuple Bypass Burger™. These dishes range in weight from half a pound to four pounds of beef. Also on the menu are Flatliner Fries® (cooked in pure lard) and the Coronary Dog™, Lucky Strike no filter cigarettes, alcohol, Butterfat Milkshakes™, full sugar Coca-Cola, and candy cigarettes for the kids!
https://heartattackgrill.com/press
Real sugar Coca-Cola is delicious though, and while this may just be a personal anecdote, real sugar soda always makes me feel full and satiated, while I've been able to drink several cans of corn syrup soda in a sitting before, I can't imagine doing that with several cans of real sugar soda. The calories are pretty much the same!
Was very confused by this comment, until I looked it up. It seems, sweet beverages and candies in the U.S. are not sweetened with sucrose (table sugar) like in most places on earth. Instead, they use fructose (fruit sugar) syrup.
The more you know.
It's more complicated than that.
Many foods in the United States are sweetened with high fructose corn syrup (which is very cheap compared to cane sugar because growing corn is very cheap in the United States because of climate, infrastructure, and extensive government subsidies). In soft drinks, the syrup is roughly 55% fructose, 45% glucose.
Table sugar is usually sucrose, which is a compound sugar (disaccharide) comprised of one fructose and one glucose molecule. In many bottled soft drinks, the low pH of the beverage hydrolyzes the sucrose into its component sugars, resulting in a solution of 50% fructose and 50% glucose.
Chemically, we're comparing a 55/45 mixture of fructose and glucose to a 50/50 mixture of fructose and glucose. HFCS has become a bogeyman in American society, but evidence since the 1980s seems to show that, when it comes to soda, the excess fructose isn't nearly as bad as the whole "recreationally drinking 40g of instantly available sugar" part.
Mexican coke does taste different, but it may have more to do with the other flavorants and the bottling process than the source of the sugar.
Here's a fantastic video about this all: https://www.pbs.org/video/everyone-is-wrong-about-mexican-co...
Edit: I found a cool 2014 study that actually assayed the sugar content in various soda pop brands: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S089990071...
Looks like some HFCS-sweetened soda pop has up to a 70/30 fructose/glucose ratio. It's also worth noting that corn syrup contains maltose and various polysaccharides not present in table sugar, but I think most of that is refined out in colas, since there only seems to be 1% maltose present in the colas analyzed by this paper.
The real sugar cocacola is sometimes called Mexican Coke in the USA to refer to the different sweetener being used.
No, they use "high fructose corn syrup", which is, just like table sugar, a mix of fructose and glucose (sucrose is 50% fructose and 50% glucose). The increase in the fructose fraction in HFCS over table sugar is single-digit percentage.
It's not "fructose" vs "sucrose", it's a difference between something that's 50% fructose and 50% glucose (table sugar) and something that is 42% fructose and 53% glucose (corn syrup).
A must visit, though I have no idea how anyone could possibly get past the single bypass...
Just looked it up on Google Maps. Have to say it's not exactly what I would expect from a restaurant... but makes sense in Vegas though.
Worth noting there seems to be no upper limit for the anabolic response to protein ingestion, according to this study:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38118410/
What happens is that the excess of protein stays in your system, but, if you don't use the nutrient by exercising, the caloric excess will obviously make you fat.
"These findings demonstrate that the magnitude and duration of the anabolic response to protein ingestion is not restricted and has previously been underestimated in vivo in humans."
It says 1.2-1.6 grams of protein and healthy fats per kilogram of body weight, from animal and plant sources (including milk). Is that really advocating for more meat?
The implication is that the current food pyramid disproportionately weights against proteins and fats. Assuming that Americans follow the current pyramid (this is a hell of an assumption), then any change to the pyramid that asks them to change their diets in favor of more protein and fat is likely to result in them eating more meat.
In reality, I don't think anybody in the US follows the food pyramid religiously. But I do think people (try to) follow the main strokes of what the government tells them is a healthy dietary balance, and so any recommendation to increase their fat/protein intake will result in more meat consumption even if the guidelines doesn't itself proscribe that as the only source.
The food pyramid was phased out in 2011: https://www.politifact.com/article/2025/nov/07/food-pyramid-...
You can't phase out common "knowledge"!
True. But you can stop recommending bad science. The original food pyramid was an industry wish list.
I agree, and think particularly where there children are concerned at least some parents will try to follow official dietary guidelines to make sure their kids grow up healthy and with healthy habits.
> But I do think people (try to) follow the main strokes of what the government tells them is a healthy dietary balance...
Do you really observe that in your circles? I've lived in 6 different states, from Maryland to Idaho, and I've never got an impression that many people take any real though or consideration for their health at all. If anything, I'd armchair guestimate something like 10% of adults seem to put any real attention of effort into their health. I feel like late teens to late college year people put more effort in general, but only because they themselves are on the meat market and don't usually have complex lives (kids, careers)
Americans do not follow the food guidelines. It's an absurdly low percentage who do
As I see it, the point of this new pyramid is not to add more emphasis to meat specifically, but to undo some of the past vilification of fat (note the emphasis on whole milk and full fat dairy), and to move emphasis away from carbs as the basis of the diet. And honestly, I think that's pretty much correct - the low fat movement was a disaster for our collective health, because food manufacturers added more sugar to compensate for the bad effects on taste that that has, and because if you eat a good amount of full fat stuff, there's not nearly as much need to snack between meals.
If you go to Western Europe, they're not drinking lots of skim milk, and if you eat things from the bakeries, there's more butter and not as much low quality vegetable oil or sugar. When my French cousins come here, they find lots of the stuff sold here revoltingly sweet.
What is "low quality vegetable oil"? I never heard that term before. Are some types considered high quality?
First, a grain of salt, I'm certainly not an expert, I've just read a bit about the subject.
You know how people like cold pressed extra virgin olive oil? Or avocado oil? Those are "high quality". Industrially refined/deodorized/hexane-extracted soybean, corn, non-high-oleic sunflower/safflower oil, canola tend to be considered to be on the opposite end of the spectrum.
Deodorizing causes the oil to oxidize, as does deep frying, and that makes a variety of nasty byproducts that seem likely to cause systemic inflammation. And from here on HN the other day, "Inflammation now predicts heart disease better than cholesterol" https://www.empirical.health/blog/inflammation-and-heart-hea...
People in this thread are scoffing at RFK saying that beef tallow fries are "healthy", and while I wouldn't go that far, there seems to be good evidence that it's much healthier to deep fry in beef tallow than the soybean oil most switched to in the 90s. Beef tallow is high in saturated fat, which tends to be relatively stable under heat, and very low in polyunsaturated fats, which tend to be the fats that oxidize the worst. Soybean oil, on the other hand, is extremely high in polyunsaturated fat (60% vs 2-4% for beef tallow). And the big problem with commercial deep frying is that the oil is frequently just topped off rather than replaced, so those oxidization byproducts build up over time. More stable fat is really important there.
I also don't know how relevant this is, but soybean frying oil tends to have silicone-based anti-foaming agents mixed in (polydimethylsiloxane is the one I've seen most commonly) - you can find this in the big jugs at Costco if you want to check it out. Silicone generally doesn't seem great to be swallowing - I think it's pretty inert, but it seems likely to me to have mechanical properties that your body's not quite used to dealing with effectively. This is just me being biased about eating something that's pretty obviously not food, though, I haven't seen much on the subject.
Hydrogenated oils are now well known to be bad (trans fats). So Crisco/creamed vegetable shortening, very low quality.
So yeah, there are higher and lower quality oils, especially once they've been degraded via high heat over a long period and oxygen exposure in commercial or industrial frying processes.
Actual human RCTs do not show any increased systemic inflammation when consuming seed oils like canola vs. animal fats, and saturated fat consumption from animal cooking fats can still drive cardiovascular risk, even if it is not the singular cause.
Fried foods are bad for you regardless. The idea that one could swap out a seed oil for some other fat and keep all of their bad habits otherwise in place and magically become healthy is a fantasy.
Interesting, thanks. Know of where to read the random trial results? Did they clear the chemically separated/deodorized oils from suspicion? While I err on the side of avoiding them, I don’t have too strong an opinion on this, because like I said, not an expert.
Why are fried foods bad for you? It’s commonly held wisdom, but I’m curious what the mechanics are, to see if there’s a way to mitigate it. Is it something other than the oxidation products that I mentioned? And if it is those, would a more stable fat not fare better? I guess there’s the changes to the food from the high temps in both cases.
There are a handful of studies referenced by this review that look at health impacts of vegetable oils: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11600290/
For fried food, I'd worry way more about the raw caloric density and the overeating that can be induced by hyperpalatable foods[1] than oxidation.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperpalatable_food
Thanks, I’ll take a look.
Something to note is the acknowledgements, though: “This work was supported by the Soy Nutrition Institute Global, United Soybean Board, Corn Refiners of America, National Corn Growers Association, Canola Council of Canada and USA Canola Association. These funders had no role in the design, analysis or writing of this article.”
Doesn’t mean it’s junk, but also probably not totally disinterested science, since continued funding is probably contingent on them being happy with the results.
EDIT: from what I read, it was mostly a high level summary of literature wihh th some conclusions like high polyunsaturated fat is good for reducing ldl levels, it mentioned at the end that you shouldn’t reuse deep frying oil, try to keep oil under smoke point, some other things like that. Didn’t see much about inflammation, but I didn’t read too carefully, just skimmed.
This can be an outrageous amount for a normal individual. These proportions are used for bodybuilders and powerlifters.
And even then this rule is not perfect because of individual genetics, metabolism rates, activity level, percentage of lean mass, etc.
Americans (US citizens) really do eat a lot. What the hell
These numbers are actually "disappearance" they include an immense amount of food waste as well so the average American is probably almost half a body builder and leaving food on their plate at a restaurant while more of it is going bad at home and in their grocery.
1.5g/kg for a 90kg person is 135g. You can get almost half that daily need from a chicken breast or a few ounces of fish. Two meals of that and a few non-meat things like rice and beans, lentils, peanut butter, etc and you're set, even towards the higher end of the recommended range. That's doesn't seem outrageous at all.
And here I am thinking that 50-100g of protein per day for an elderly person was way too low.
But here we have the problems with the numbers and why they should only be guidelines. Consumption of protein needs to increase as you get old (into the range we consider for athletes). And basing consumption on body weight is stupid, because telling an obese person they need to eat twice as much protein as a non-obese person is probably wrong.
I think most commenters are missing two things:
1. It’s proteins and fats, not just protein. The site specifically calls out avocado as an example.
2. It’s from meat and vegetable sources. Other commenters have mentioned that you get more protein from non-meat sources than you expect.
People are also forgetting the importance of fiber for satiety and gut health.
yeah, and it’s also worth noting that the usual guidelines you hear like “eat 1g of protein for each pound you weigh” are actually meant to be 1g of protein per pound of lean mass, which for many people is significantly smaller amount.
The public health discourse about protein is in a weird place right now. The recommendations are higher than ever, yet people are constantly told not to think about protein, or to worry about excess protein intake instead.
Case in point: the Mayo Clinic article titled "Are you getting enough protein?"[0]
It claims that protein is only a concern for people who are undereating or on weight loss drugs, yet it cites protein recommendations that many people find challenging to meet (1.1g/kg for active people, more if you're over 40 or doing strength or endurance workouts.) To top it off, it's illustrated with a handful of nuts, which are pretty marginal sources of protein. It's bizarrely mixed messaging.
[0] https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speak...
When I did strength sports and would eat ~180g protein a day (which for me was 1.8g/100kg), I ate a lot less meat than you would think, I was carefully tracking all my food for a while and you have to count the whole diet.
I really like this study of a population of highly trained athletes and their diets/protein intake: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27710150/
In that study they eat > 1.2g protein/kg body weight, but 43% of that is "plant sources", meaning grains, legumes, fruits and vegetables. Like one serving of oatmeal is 6g, things you don't think of as "protein" add up and you have to count them. The athletes in that study are Dutch and 19% of their protein intake came from bread.
But what always happens with protein recommendations is that they say "x grams protein/kg bodyweight" but people hear "protein is meat, you are telling me to eat x grams/kg bodyweight of meat." Very few people ever look closely enough at their diet to develop an intuitive sense for counting macros.
Protein from grain food isn’t as well absorbed as protein from meat, milk, fish. Roughly, 2g of protein from bean equal 1g meat protein.
Yes, but the standards aren't based on "the best protein to absorb", they are based on whole diet consumption. Studies like the one I linked to are where the recommendations come from. It is a misunderstanding to read a recommendation for 1.2g/kg (or whatever) as saying that the 1.2g is supposed to all be meat quality protein. It's supposed to be the protein in your total mixed diet.
Your diet contains many sources of protein lower quality than beans (as in the linked study with high level Dutch athletes getting 19% of their protein from bread), you do need to count those. They do add up and if you don't, you end up assuming you need way more protein than you do.
but then how do you know how much protein you should eat ?
if I'm eating bread, pasta and other cereals, I may exceed the 1.2g/kg recommendations but the PDCAAS (Protein Digestibility-Corrected Amino Acid Score) of these would make it in truth closer to 0.6g/kg.
Someone else eating mostly meat would get in total 1.2g/kg protein but also 1.2g/kg when PDCAAS is accounted for.
Maybe it's to simplify the calculation to the average user but it feels misleading, you can't know for sure the proportion of cereals in somebody diet.
Well, that's exactly the problem with focusing too hard on one macro nutrient recommendation out of context of other balanced diet recommendations.
Adding lean meat, dairy, eggs to protein poor diets is good, I love all of those things. Trying to hit a high protein target and understanding this to mean having to eat all or mostly meat is simply over correcting in a different direction.
And meat isn't a perfect PDCAAS! Beef is 0.92 close to soy at 0.91. Milk, eggs, soy protein (isolate), whey are 1. Beans are 0.75.
There's even more nuance, beans are partly lower because they are low in methionine, the essential amino acid that adults needs far less of than any other amino acid and that you don't need more of. In the context of a whole diet, it's not 92% of every gram for beef and 75% of every gram for beans, it doesn't work that way.
Relatively small servings of animal foods add up to a lot of protein, like some other comment was freaking out about needing to eat 4 hamburgers or a 16 oz steak to hit the (very modest) goal of 90g in a day. But something like, 1 egg + 1 can tuna + 1 serving Greek yogurt == 42g, is already at half the goal, much of the rest of it will fill out just fine from a balanced set of other non-empty calorie sources.
Source?
PDCAAS (Protein Digestibility-Corrected Amino Acid Score)
90g of protein, what is recommended for me, is like 4 hamburgers or a 16oz steak per day ...
Doesn't make sense to me that a 400lb obese person would need to consume the same amount of protein as a 400lb lean muscle bodybuilder.
All of the protein recommendations I've seen were for lean mass. You don't feed fat.
All these things are actually rules of thumb that aim to be easy, and less focused on accurate.
A reasonably close rule of thumb can actually be 1g of protein per cm of height.
Also not accurately represented is that your body absorbs less protein per gram consumed the older you get. (I couldnt find a source with an actual ratio, just recommendations for _more_ as you get older).
When listening to folks like Layne Norton, they have said that surprisingly many people who simply increase their protein inadvertently begin to lose weight due to greater satiety per net calorie. (remember, roughly 20% of protein calories are lost in digesting/absorbing/converting the protein)
Correct, and the guideline on the "realfood.gov" site doesn't say it but all the protein g/kg body weight I've seen (mostly relative to weight training or building muscle) are in terms of kg of lean body mass, not total body weight.
I am not 400lbs... I don't know if you are implying that... if so check your math:
1.2g/kg * 90kg (~200lbs-lean) = 108g of protein.
each person, on average, in the US would be eating one 16oz steak or 3-5 hamburgers every day.
A 16oz steak is over 50% protein, or over double your entire daily target. Hamburger count could be right, if you are eating McDonald's burgers or similar. But then you are not following the guidelines, with far too much processed grains and added sugars.
Your beef is with wiki or facts :
"high scores: braised eye-of-round steak 40.62; broiled t-bone steak (porterhouse) 32.11; grilled lean steak 31.0 " numbers are grams per hundred grams or wiki also reports 25% as the average, thus your factor of 2 error in weight (400 instead of 200).
Sincerely,
You-cannot-read-or-convert-units-or-gather-info-correctly
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_foods_by_protein_conte...
For some more perspective:
Cranberry's & nut mix - 34g (total) have 8g of protein
1 cup of milk - roughly 8g of protein
This is a pretty light breakfast of 16g of protein. How about a 'big, bold breakfast':
2 eggs - 12 g of protein
4 bacon strips - 12 g of protein
1 cup of hash browns - 3 g of protein
(other carbs pancakes etc going to have < 1g of protein)
So in the 'big, bold breakfast' => 27 g of proteins, I would be 3g behind my daily, average protein intake for the morning.
2 hamburgers for lunch, that's 30g of protein, keeping me close to my daily, average protein intake for lunch.
8 oz steak for dinner, thats 56g of protein.
In total: 27+30+56 = 112g of protein, just 4 g over needed daily, average intake of protein.
Resisting the sarcasm, this is not reasonable.
[1] Perkins https://perkinsmenus.com/hearty-mans-combo/#:~:text=Two%20eg...
> Doesn't make sense to me that a 400lb obese person would need to consume the same amount of protein as a 400lb lean muscle bodybuilder.
yeah both of those people are extreme cases that would break this very crude formula
If you don’t forget to count proteins from all the grains and other products, then you may realise you don’t need that much meat (or any meat at all).
Nobody should be getting all of their protein from meat, though.
Even a cup of cooked rice or a slice of bread has several grams of protein.
People, even meat-eaters, tend to get much of their protein intake from the long tail of non-meat foods they consume. Lots of foods (especially grains and legumes) have a little bit of protein, and that adds up.
That's not really a lot of protein on a low carb diet like they are suggesting.
Nobody said you have to get all your protein from meat…
do you think that's a lot or a little? does that sound realistic or unrealistic?
Too many calories is the basic explanation for why American's health sucks. Calories available per person has gone up ~32% since the 1960s (we obviously can't measure calories consumed per person, but supply and demand would dictate these excess calories are going somewhere). It is not clear to me that meat specifically is a problem so much as excess consumption leading to obesity, which then causes chronic health problems downstream.
Though of course "meat" is too vague a category to be helpful. Obviously there's a link between beef and heart disease and colorectal cancer. There seems to be no health problems associated with consuming chicken or seafood.
People are more wasteful now (in times of relative plenty generally) too though, at least I'm sure that's true in the UK.
I bet the number of vegans and vegetarians in the US are also at their highest (and growing).
That's probably true, but I don't think vegans and vegetarians as a demographic overlap closely with demographics that tend to have heart disease.
(Note that I am neither a vegetarian nor a vegan.)
There is a massive amount of research that shows that Vegans are healthier as a population than Vegetarians and definitely meat eaters. Lower risks of nearly every preventable food related illnesses, including cancer. Having this new government health pyramid flies in the face of nearly all current research.
There may be some correlation but causality is unclear. India has a lot of vegetarians and also a high incidence of heart disease.
That might have something more to do with almost one in four people in India being a tobacco user[1]. CDC suggests that one in four CVD deaths (in the US) is caused by tobacco use[2].
[1]: https://globalactiontoendsmoking.org/research/tobacco-around...
[2]: https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/about/cigarettes-and-cardiovascu...
It has more to do with people who are on farming diets but no longer farm.
People in India smoked just as much when they weren't living such sedentary lifestyles.
I don't understand the claim: is it that farming diets are unhealthy, or something else? I'd expect subsistence lifestyles to have higher all-round mortality, but probably not CVD specifically.
> People in India smoked just as much when they weren't living such sedentary lifestyles.
I suspect they also lived shorter lives for the aforementioned all-round mortality reasons.
Farming diets are rich in calories. Great for farmers. Not so great for desk jockeys.
I think most farming diets in India are closer to subsistence diets, or at least historically have been.
(If you have resources that show otherwise, that would be interesting. But smoking really does seem like the obvious historical outlying factor for heart disease in India, with calorie-dense diets playing catch up as the country has become wealthier.)
Vegans are probably mostly healthy. Vegetarians? Religious vegetarians and healthy vegetarians intersect but mostly don't ;).
I remember seeing a paper a while back that found veganism increased your death by ischemic stroke probability threefold.
Because of old age. Being vegan increased your odds threefold to die of old age instead of prematurely from disease.
Apologies for not having a link to the source
This is not accurate. Please link to your source.
A healthy, whole-food plant-based diet is linked to a lower risk of ischemic stroke, with studies showing reduced risk compared to meat-eaters. The conclusion of this paper[1] for example reads that "Lower risk of total stroke was observed by those who adhered to a healthful plant-based diet."
Additionally, researchers at Harvard found that a plant-based diet may lower overall stroke risk by up to 10%. [2]
1: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8166423/
2: https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/healthy-plant-based-diet-assoc...
Hey, do whatever helps you sleep at night. That's what I do. We're all going to the same place - a couple of years here and there won't do much when you're that old anyway.
nothing stops you from reading more about the topics before commenting on them haha
I thought that would fall under common sense, but if not:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10479225/
But it sure does seem like that sometimes
I'd strongly prefer the government just not try to tell people what to eat, the incentives will always be perverse and nutrition science is anything but science in most cases.
EDIT down-thread to prove my point you'll see people citing studies in favor of and against the new recommendations. The studies are almost always in animals or use self reported data with tiny sample sizes.
The whole point of government performing the function is that they don't profit from misleading you, rather their goal is the country's welfare.
Obviously there are exceptions - particularly right now - but those are solved by rooting out corruption.
You say that but the food pyramid was devised but the agriculture lobby, and was never based on science.
Is this true? Specifically, "devised by" vs "influenced by" and "never based on science" meaning there was no, for example, attempt to improve heart disease rates?
In any event, looking at the whole history of food guidance paints a clearer picture of my point. Happy to hear of alternatives though!
I guess it would be more correct to say it was heavily influenced by the ag industry[1].
> attempt to improve heart disease rates
The diet basedheart disease science of the early 1990s was totally junk.[2]
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8375951/
[2] https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2016/09/404081/sugar-papers-reveal...
Totally junk or skewed to ignore sugar as a contributor? Again I have to immediately doubt your dire accusations because they diverge from what is said in your link as well as what my physician says about cholesterol.
And it's not like the 90s pyramid had sugar at the base.
Yes, largely junk. As I mentioned the literature is full of studies that are nothing but some regressions on top of self reported dietary data. It’s almost all very low quality[1].
[1] https://www.science.org/content/article/people-are-bad-repor...
> not try to tell people what to eat
food industry has to be policed -- The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is a high school level story featuring the meat packing industry. All around, additives and substitutes are more profitable than raw ingredients.
I'm clearly not advocating against basic safety oversight. It's worth noting that The Jungle was a work of fiction and Sinclair famously fabricated a lot of details wholesale.
"a chicken in every pot" is a political slogan that has been in active use from 17th century France to at least Herbert Hoover.
Processed food and sugar consumption has also gone up.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8805510/
> Conclusions: As observed from the food availability data, processed and ultra-processed foods dramatically increased over the past two centuries, especially sugar, white flour, white rice, vegetable oils, and ready-to-eat meals. These changes paralleled the rising incidence of NCDs, while animal fat consumption was inversely correlated.
Small nit - this is probably assumed, but I would like the unit to be explicit: Yearly per capita pounds of meat.
That is, how many pounds of meat the average American eats in a year. An increase of 100 pounds means about an extra quarter-pound a day.
The biggest food related problem in the US is obesity. Lean meat is very high satiety and really helps with keeping weight in check. Of course a McDonalds meal is the opposite and you eat more than half your day's calories in a few minutes.
You should see the local Golden Corral.
The moment I saw whole milk and a huge steak in the intro, I knew this website was not to be trusted.
Milk is very unhealthy, in any quantity.
Meat is as well. Maybe organic in small quantities, not too often can help.
Fish is problematic as much is contaminated with mercury and other heavy metals (we poisoned the ocean).
So what then do you believe is a healthy diet? Surely eating animal protein on a regular basis is better than having to take a variety of unregulated supplements to stay within a healthy range of essential vitamins and minerals? Animal protein also has the upside of offering a tremendous amount of, well, protein, alongside the necessary vitamins.
Dairy (in certain forms) offers the same benefits.
> Surely eating animal protein on a regular basis is better than having to take a variety of unregulated supplements to stay within a healthy range of essential vitamins and minerals?
By "variety" you mean B12 & omega 3? Or is there something else you think vegans need to supplement that omnivores don't? My kids have varying dietary preferences and personally I haven't found it any more difficult to get high-quality supplements than it is to get high-quality animal proteins.
But what "variety of unregulated supplements" most reminds me of is my chore prepping the cow mineral-vitamin mixes on the farm I worked on as a kid. Most farm animals are given a variety of supplements (by my recollection the cows got A, D, E, iodine, selenium, zinc, various minerals...) that have even less regulation than human supplements. And roughly two thirds of beef cattle in the US receive growth-promoting hormones, though we didn't use those on our farm. And much of the dairy consumed in the US is directly supplemented with vitamin A and D. If you consume animal products in the US you're probably already taking poorly-regulated supplements, they've just been laundered through the body of an animal.
(To be clear I don't agree with the grandparent comment that animal products like dairy, meat, and fish are inherently unhealthy, at least for most people. But neither do I agree that they're inherently superior.)
What is your criteria for "very unhealthy" and do you have any evidence to back up that claim?
If milk if unhealthy in any quantity how did we all survive infancy?
I think the key point is the relative ratios of meat versus processed carbs. Right now we have government guidance telling people to eat more processed carbs than meat, and that’s backward.
Americans also just need to eat less period, but that’s a separable issue.
>Right now we have government guidance telling people to eat more processed carbs than meat
No we don't. Please show me where.
Are you claiming the old food pyramid is where?
Because Bush jr deprecated that in 2006, and his new, balanced pyramid was again replaced in 2011 by MyPlate, which did not tell you to eat more processed carbs, and was not even a pyramid.
Why do so many of you people think that something that was very clearly replaced twice is still somehow in effect? How much of the recent history of the US are you guys missing? Did you lose your memory or something?
Okay, I amend my statement to say “we raised an entire generation to think you should eat multiple times as much carbs as protein.”
I learned the 1992 food pyramid in school. I was in college by the time they changed it, and I have no idea what the current one says. When the government undertakes a mass campaign to socialize children into a particular idea that’s what happens.
At least the page mentions alternatives - plenty of other sources of protein, like dairy, eggs, legumes, etc.
My wife is vegetarian, mostly vegan because she's allergic to dairy.
I really enjoyed "keeping up" with her when we were dating, because I was really tired of eating the same things all the time. There's really a lot of delicious plant proteins if you take the time to look.
(That being said, our kids like meat. We just don't eat it all the time.)
Fun...
This is something I have been thinking about and researching for awhile, because there is so very much confusing language out there.
Your quote says over the last century, so I'm going to use roughly 1920 as the baseline. It also refers to a per capita increase of meat consumption by 100 pounds, or about 45.4 kilograms (to make the math easier). This is roughly an increase of 124g of meat per person per day (or about 3oz if that makes more sense to you).
This equates to a daily increase in per-capita protein intake by 25-30g (depending on which meat and how lean it is).
In 1920, the average American adult male was about 140 pounds, and ate about 100g of protein per day, which works out to roughly 0.71 grams per pound of body weight (or about 1.6 grams per kilogram).
In 2025, one century later, the average American adult male is 200 pounds, and if he eats the same ratio of weight to protein, you would expect that he would eat around 140g of protein per day, which is slightly higher than the increase in per-capita meat consumption over the same time.
However, if you look at actual statistics of what people are eating in protein, you'll see that the average American adult male is actually eating about 97g of protein per day, or about 0.49 grams per pound (1.1 grams per kg), which is much less than we ate a century ago, which means that that the increase in meat consumption doesn't match change in protein, so is offset by either less non-meat protein, meat with lower protein content (e.g. more fat), or both.
There was some discussion lower in the thread about bodybuilders vs normal people, and about basing your calculations on lean body weight vs full bodyweight. Lean body weight calculations are often used for bodybuilders, but those numbers are elevated (typically 1 gram of protein per pound of lean body weight). For someone who is sedentary to lightly active (e.g. daily walks), the calculation is based on full body weight, not lean body weight, and is about 0.7 gram per pound (or 1.5 grams per kilogram), which matches this recommendation exactly.
Hitting these targets has been shown to greatly increase satiation, reduce appetite, but it does not make you lose weight, and it is not permanent (reducing your protein intake removes the effect, which makes sense). However, long term studies show that people who increase their protein intake to these levels and lose weight (through calorie reduction or fasting) keep that weight off.
Finally, from what I've been able to cobble together, high protein intakes combined with high fat and high sugar intakes does not have the same effect as a diet that matches the recommendations here (ie. it's not just about higher protein intake, it's about percentage of calories from protein, which should be around 20-25%... 200 pound sedentary to lightly active adult male, 140g of protein, or 560 calories, in a total diet of 2250-2800 calories, depending on activity level)
It’s the corn subsidies.
USA is actually healthier then in 1909. Life expectancy was going up the whole time. A whole bunch of malnutritiom related issues and diseases just disappeared.
You need to go to much more recent times to get worsening results/predictions.
I wasn't making a claim about the US being either healthier or unhealthier as a whole; I was only observing that annual per capita meat consumption does not trivially track with the benefits claimed on the site. It might, but the evidence is not presented.
> I was only observing that annual per capita meat consumption does not trivially track with the benefits claimed on the site
There was no such observation, just claim going contra observed data. The period you picked does correlate meat consumption going up with health getting better.
You said that meat consumption went up for last century. Then you claimed that "our already positive trend in meat consumption isn't yielding positive outcomes" - except that majority of that period did yielded positive outcomes.
"Last century" is a big piece of that, surely. As recently as 50 years ago, obesity rates were quite low (and risk of hunger among the poor was, you know, more real than it is today).
Wouldn't it be more likely that it's calories, not meat per se, that is the main proxy for measuring our health decline?
There is a lot of research that shows the type of calorie you consume determines to some extent the next calorie you want to consume. You are more likely to be "sated" (i.e. not want to eat more calories), if you eat protein than you are ultra-processed carbohydrates, low calorie soda will leave your body yearning sugar, and so on.
When you couple this with the motivations of industrial food companies (some of whom are now owned by tobacco companies), and the research they do into the neuroscience effects of flavour, texture, even packaging of food, you'll start to spot that a push to "Real Food", and for that food to be less processed and more inclined towards protein, is more likely to result in overall calorie reduction.
One of the things that isn't cutting through on this program is saying "eat protein" is assumed to mean "eat meat", which some assume means you can eat burgers. Nope. Healthy protein is not red meat that has been fried - that's going to take a bit more education, I expect.
I think its dangerous to engage with this website as an earnest attempt to make people healthier as individuals or as a population and not a metastasis of woo-fueld ignorance of data and trends like you're talking about whos goal is ultimately just to sell shit to desperate people.
Speaking from personal experience, this is consistent with multiple doctors over the years recommending high-protein, low carb diets. (Clarification: low does not mean no carb.)
I don't understand people freaking out over this - outside of a purely political reflex - hell hath no fury like taking away nerds' Mountain Dew and Flamin' Hot Cheetos.
Nor do I understand the negative reactions to new restrictions on SNAP - candy and sugary drinks are no longer eligible.
> I don't understand people freaking out over this
Personally I'm not a fan of any diet that recommends high meat consumption and I say that as someone who eats everything.
Cattle outweighs the total livestock on this planet by a 10 to 1 factor.
While governments pretend to do stuff for the environment, they seem to always ignore the extreme cost on the environment and pollution caused by cattle. Even focusing on CO2 emissions by industry avoids the elephant of the room of the insane levels of methane produced by cows, a gas that's 200 times more harmful.
There is little evidence that a meat heavy diet is good for people, but there's plenty of evidence of the contrary.
So, to be honest, while I don't freak out and I'm all for freedom, there has to be also some kind of consciousness into how do we use the resources on this planet, and diet is by far more impactful than the transport of choice.
The livestock industry is an ecological disaster of unimaginable proportions. 50% of all habitable land is used for agriculture. Of that land, 83% is used for livestock, despite the fact that it only provides 18% of the calories consumed worldwide.
> While governments pretend to do stuff for the environment, they seem to always ignore the extreme cost on the environment and pollution caused by cattle.
While governments and politicians generally like to portray themselves as being driven by morals, they are actually driven almost entirely by economic interests.
> So, to be honest, while I don't freak out and I'm all for freedom, [...]
Well, I would like the freedom to live on a planet with an intact ecosystem. I also think that animals would like the freedom to live a life free from unnecessary exploitation.
> [...] and diet is by far more impactful than the transport of choice.
Both are high-impact areas, but changing your diet is much easier than changing your choice of transport - in some countries. Transport emissions account for about 25% of all emissions, 60% of which are caused by individuals' use of cars.
And after all of this, we haven't even touched on what fishing is doing to our oceans.
> While governments pretend to do stuff for the environment,
Not the one that put out that statement
Very reasonable but it could not be more unpopular right now to tell people to stop eating meat
It’s maybe unpopular, but people should feel bad about it, especially they should feel shame. I don’t feel it either, who knows this for decades, and even tried a few times. But I should. There is exactly zero pressure regarding this.
Based on how people react to me simply being a vegetarian in their presence, without me commenting on what either of us are eating, people do feel shame. It's just that the shame is outweighed by the pleasure of eating whatever.
I don't think people should feel bad about it, but at least informed.
A better thing would he to have a carbon tax, so you have higher vat on beef than poultry and higher for poultry than eggs.
Why don't you think people should feel bad about it? My moral system generally dictates that I don't economically support immoral behavior, or at least seek alternatives where practical.
Don't expect a carbon tax to save us, a carbon tax is not coming.
Because it is not even a remote exaggeration to say that in order to truly make the morally "correct" choices everyday, you would need to not participate in any part of society.
Telling people to feel bad about eating animal protein but to keep driving their cars that destroy the environment, shopping at stores that underpay their employees, purchasing items that are made with diminishing resources in countries that pay close to nothing to their labor force is picking an arbitrary battle in a war of existence.
Promoting making better choices will always be more effective than asking people to feel guilty over existing at all.
Source your food locally if you can, cook and eat only what you need, etc.
It's a natural response to feel bad about your behavior not aligning with your values.
So much so that we prefer to not think about it to prop up cognitive dissonance.
I think "wanting people to feel bad" is more an urge that people at least acknowledge the dissonance. Many people don't even get that far because it's so uncomfortable.
Because people would just feel bad about it and keep doing it. I don't care about people feeling bad about immoral behavior, I care about them not doing it in the first place.
> it could not be more unpopular right now to tell people to stop eating meat
If we phrased it from a carbon perspective that would probably help it be more popular, at least for beef which is a huge methane emitter.
https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local
https://ourworldindata.org/less-meat-or-sustainable-meat
Yeah, the meat industry has successfully tied meat consumption to the American ideal of masculinity and there is an endless supply of insecure men that buy into the world of bro-science.
> Cattle outweighs the total livestock on this planet by a 10 to 1 factor.
It seems odd not to include cattle in total livestock.
The point is to emphasize that there's more cows on this planet using more resources than all of the other animals combined (excluding fish and water mammals).
You could add all the squirrels, elephants, lions, cats, birds, all of those, and you're not even at a fraction of mass of the cows we grow.
Yeah that seems phrased wrong, but here's xkcd visual: https://xkcd.com/1338/
> Nor do I understand the negative reactions to new restrictions on SNAP - candy and sugary drinks are no longer eligible
The issue is that "Ultra-Processed" does not mean "candy and sugary drinks" and even "sugary drinks" is overly broad. Can SNAP pay for sugar-free Coke but not classic coke? What about Gatorade?
SNAP already had reasonable restrictions. This very much feels like a "middle management style" project. Dedicating resources to a nebulously defined BIG project regardless of whether or not it actually improves outcomes.
Sugar free coke is not as bad as sugar-ful Coke but it's still bad. Many of the cheap sweeteners have been linked to cancer. They still fuck with the brain and hormones and make you want salty foods and/or more sweet tasting things.
So yea, how about drinking water as your primary source of hydration?
If you are poor, the last thing you need is Diabetes, Cancer, Hypertension, Cardiovascular disease, etc.
The problem also is there is a huge amount of fraud with SNAP with people claiming benefits for multiple people and then reselling their SNAP cards to just make cash. The people buying the endless cases of Mountain Dew often have just bought a 50% discounted SNAP card off some other person who isn't starving at all.
You're going to get very bored just drinking water all day every day. Why can I buy coffee to make my water more interesting? Why can I buy Kool-Aid and pour 12 tablespoons into a glass, but I can't buy a Coke? What about a diabetic who is out and needs a quick sugar fix?
Might as well tell people they also just need to eat plain rice for every meal too.
I get there is some fraud on SNAP. I know people on SNAP. Most of them use every single cent on decent food. I've seen fraud, though. In Chicago I would place a bet that most non-chain convenience stores will sell you cigarettes on SNAP. Some of them absolutely sell weed on SNAP.
There is not a huge amount of fraud with SNAP and obviously what fraud does exist should be investigated, resolved, and prevented.
You are proposing eliminating fraud by eliminating the system. "You can't have failing tests if you have no tests"
The negative reactions to the new SNAP restrictions are because much of it make no sense. In the states that have implemented there has been mass confusion at many stores as people can't figure out what is eligible and what is not.
For example at one store there was confusion as to why a ready to eat cup of cut fruit packaged with a plastic spoon from the store's deli department was ineligible, but a slice of cake packaged with a plastic fork from the store's bakery was eligible. Apparently the cake being made with flour makes it OK, regardless of how much sugar is in the cake and the icing.
Pure partisan spite. The gov't not spending money on candy and sugary drinks is good. Just like when Michelle Obama pushed for better school lunches.
When Michelle Obama pushed for better school lunches she was excoriated for trying to get healthier foods into the hands of children. Glenn Beck's response was "Get your damn hands off my fries, lady. If I want to be a fat, fat, fatty and shovel French fries all day long, that is my choice!". Seems partisan spite cuts both ways.
I'm glad to see this announcement and despite the leadership in Washington right now I don't think these adjustment will be seen as too controversial by the American public. The recommendations are based on a lot of good nutritional science that's been out there for years, but the buck seems to stop at the conversation around fat.
They went to great lengths to remove the debate around good fat vs bad fat from this discussion. Even reading the report, emphasis is put on the discussion of why we use so many pressed oils in the food chain, but not why we phased lard and shortening out of the American diet.
"Eat real butter" is ostensibly a recommendation presented at the bottom of the webpage, but butter is not a healthy fat. Same with some people's obsession with frying in beef tallow, but the report doesn't want to dig into this distinction for obvious self interested reasons. They even recommend:
> When cooking with or adding fats to meals, prioritize oils with essential fatty acids, such as olive oil. Other options can include butter or beef tallow.
Which is a good recommendation. But no, you don't want to replace olive oil with butter or beef tallow. There's a lot of good nutrition science to back this up, but the report would prefer to not go there. Maybe "eat some butter" is appropriate, but unless the FDA wants to have an honest conversation around HDL and LDL cholesterol and saturated fats, I don't see this inverted pyramid doing too much good for overall population health (besides raising awareness)
Partisan spite does cut both ways and should be seen as such and ignored on either side.
Regarding fat I think "eat real whole unprocessed food" is a simple way to cover it. These guideliness recommend using less added fat including avoiding deep frying, and if one must use fat to use a minimally processed (i.e. pressed or rendered) form like olive oil or coconut oil or butter or animal fat. Though they failed to mention the distinction between refined and unrefined olive oil - today much of it is refined i.e. highly processed.
One of the best litmus tests for Democrat or Republican I have found is "Should people on food stamps be able to buy mountain dew / candy / etc with them?", very low false positive rate in either direction.
But regardless I have it on very good authority that with the BBB some within the Republican party wanted to limit EBT to only be able to purchase healthy food. No soda, no candy, no chips, etc. A couple calls from Coke, Pepsi, etc lobbyists shot that down.
People should be able to get cash transfers to buy goods on the general market. There shouldn't be food stamps.
The success of SNAP comes despite its inherent inefficiency, friction, and the indignity of its limitations. We structure the program the way we do in order to mollify voters who twitch at the idea of the poor ever enjoying anything.
Inequality isn't just about healthcare costs, biological metrics, etc. It is also deeply corrosive socially and psychologically, and this side of things is systemically underappreciated in policy circles.
To be sure, our food and diets are bad. Americans broadly should eat healthier. But are society's interests really better served by insisting that a poor child not be allowed to have a cake and blow out the candles on his birthday, the way all of his friends do?
In California you can use food stamps for fast food.
I haven't been there in a while so it might be different now.
Let's think about it.
Your homeless or in an unstable living situation. You don't have access to a kitchen, where are you going to make a home cooked meal.
How are you going to prepare raw chicken without a stove. Some homeless encampments do have people trying to cook, which sounds neat until a fire starts.
Let someone down on there luck buy a sandwich with SNAP. Maybe a shake too. Keeps the fastfood franchise in business, keeps people employed there.
The money is going to flow right into the local economy. I'd rather my tax dollars stay here than funding military bases all over planet earth.
I agree with you though. Just give people money. I feel like a UBI is the way to go. A single Flat tax rate for everyone. Everyone gets 1000$ a month( just off the top of my head, could be higher or lower).
The bizzaro welfare cliff... If you and your partner have kids it can be smart to not get married and have the kids live with whoever makes less.
They get free healthcare with the less affluent parent and you just hope you don't get sick.
In California you can also use food stamps at farmer’s markets with a 50% discount.
It seems unnecessarily reductive to insist that we must choose between endlessly subsidizing Mountain Dew and Twinkies or that poor children should never be allowed to have cake.
Honestly when it comes to SNAP there's no good answer that achieves all of the reasonable policy goals ('make sure the kids have something to eat', and 'avoid wasting benefit money on crap')
You can replace it with cash aid, and there's a good chance a good chunk of recipients will spend most of it on drugs, lottery tickets, or alcohol while the kids go hungry.
On the other hand, you can have the way it is now, where the same kind of person who would do the above, sells $200 worth of SNAP benefits to whatever corrupt bodega owner in exchange for $100 to spend on drugs, lottery tickets, or alcohol while the kids go hungry.
In both situations the government is spending $200 to buy the poor harmful vices. We're just choosing between fraudster shop owners getting a cut, or the addict being able to buy twice as much malt liquor.
And in case it isn't clear, I don't think the majority of SNAP recipients sell their benefits or don't feed their kids. But the responsible group, well, it makes little difference to them whether they have EBT or cash aid as they're going to buy food anyway.
> We're just choosing between fraudster shop owners getting a cut, or the addict being able to buy twice as much malt liquor.
I don't agree with these zero friction in a vacuum takes. Difficulty in access does shape choices, a lot in fact.
If you make it easier for people to use handouts to gamble or do drugs or whatever then more people will do it and ones doing it will do more of it. This isn't even a take its the null hypothesis.
The null hypothesis could just as easily be if they get a 1:1 dollar exchange rate versus a 1:2 rate on their food stamps, they can afford to buy drugs AND food instead of just drugs. Guess which one they buy if they can only buy one? Guess what they are incentivized to do if they have less cash than they need on hand to do both? I'll give you a hint, it rhymes with teal.
> A couple calls from Coke, Pepsi, etc lobbyists shot that down.
Fucking hell, if this is true, I don't know how those people sleep at night. Really, It's a failure if my imagination, but I don't imagine how people like this function. I'm sure I've done my share of indirect harm in this world, one way or the other, but being so on the nose about it would make me absolutely nauseous.
It is indeed true.
The truth is that lobbyists have a ton of cards to play, including that if such a ban were to go through, there would be a lot less demand for High Fructose Corn Syrup, which might sound wonderful, except that HFCS is a byproduct of corn, which is a major export of some very competitive swing states.
You fuck with that, your party gets trounced in the next election.
Half of the purpose of SNAP is to be yet more subsidy to American megafarms. That was literally how it was done by FDR, and why it is administered by the department of Agriculture. It intentionally drives food production that wouldn't necessarily be profitable on its own because most first world countries, including the US, found that letting Capitalism run free on your food supply would result in booms, busts, and cyclic famine.
Soaking up grain and corn syrup supplies is intentional. Ethanol in our gas has a similar purpose.
However, the primary reason you should not care about SNAP recipients spending money on soda or chips or junk is because it's usually a good price/calorie ratio, so for the half a percent of Americans that literally don't get enough to eat, it can be sustaining, if not healthy, but for the rest, the idea that people shouldn't be able to have a small luxury because it's socialized is just too much.
Taking candy from children is probably just not worth the squeeze. The entire federal SNAP program is ~$80 billion.
Lookup WIC. It is a very restricted program of food assistance, and spends immense effort and money of "only healthy" or "no junk" and parental education and supporting nutrition, and it really pays off, but it does that by relying on ENORMOUS free labor from parents and stores. A WIC checkout takes significantly longer than average, is more error prone, and is miserable for all involved, for like $30 of bread and cheese.
Very informative post, and for background, I am not an us citizen. I have no issue with the idea of small luxury because it's socialized, but I do have the impression that obesity is a huge issue in the US and these kind of consumption patterns cause reinforcement and lead to worse outcomes. I have nothing against cheap food and cheap calories(actually I think they are super useful) but I do think healthier people are an aim we, as a species, should target.
This is like saying your goal in life is to help people but somehow you ended up 50 rungs from the top and landed on becoming a cop.
I agree, but: "individual freedom"
It's a great umbrella.
If they so choose to dissolve their teeth and decimate their guy bacteria, who am I to intervene?
It's gross, but it works for gross people, and there's a high enough percentage of gross people for this to make sense.
> If they so choose to dissolve their teeth and decimate their guy bacteria, who am I to intervene?
In this case, I'm the American taxpayer who is paying for all of this food, and, perhaps more importantly, paying for all of the medical treatment they receive because of the consequences of these choices.
When your consumption is being paid for by other people, it's perfectly reasonable for those people to put limits on your choices, especially when they're footing the bill for the consequences of any bad choices you make too. We're a wealthy country and shouldn't let people starve, but you don't need ice cream or Coke or Pringles not to starve.
Just to be clear, I wasn't agreeing with it. I was attempting to answer the question of 'how do they sleep at night?'.
What they tell themselves is: liberty!
Like I said: gross.
I would say that a short answer that implicitly accepts the framing of the question is a flag for someone without well-considered political views.
I'll bite. I think there is a difference between "should they" and "should they be able to."
Most liberals I know think they shouldn't but that its stupid to police this aspect of people's behavior if they are on EBT. Most liberals might even feel more comfortable regulating everyone's behavior by taxing unhealthy foods than they would just bothering poor people with it.
EBT is already money with strings attached - you can only spend it on food. I don't see narrowing the definition of "food" here to exclude soda to be a huge problem.
I don't really see the point, as a practical matter. Money being the fungible thing that it is, the only way this policy actually restricts anything is if the only money SNAP recipients ever spend on food is their SNAP benefit.
It feels much more like spite politics: We can tell these people whose morals are so bad that they need our money to survive that they cannot spend it on what we think of as junk food. That is a luxury only us hard working folk are permitted. When you are poor, you cannot suffer alone, you need to know that we are making sure you feel extra pain. Please be motivated to be better.
Easily sidestepped, however, there is a thriving economy in poor neighborhoods around converting EBT to cash.
Soda, I agree.
Chips ... I think you should probably allow parents to spend EBT to buy a bag of chips for a hungry/picky kid in a pinch.
Why shouldn't EBT money be allowed to purchase sugar free soda?
Since it has no calories, it's not "food" by even a very loose definition.
As someone who lives in a neighborhood where most tapwater is still delivered by lead service lines, I'm sympathetic to the argument that it provides hydration. I'd prefer that my tax dollars went to solving that problem more directly, however.
Are you saying you shouldn't be able to buy water with SNAP money?
I think it could be argued either way. There's plenty of non-food necessities (toilet paper, feminine hygiene products, etc.) that aren't covered by SNAP.
RFK and his type think sugar free soda gives you cancer, or whatever.
If we want healthy food we have to regulate the food-makers. Everything else is skirting the edges of the problem. Taxes, EBT restrictions, none of that will make a dent.
Taxes like that seem all but required if you want to have a chance at a functioning single payer system. 0 chance single-payer will works with so much freedom to destroy yourself then make everyone pay for it.
You have all of that freedom in countries with single-payer but somehow they're able to make it work.
I don't see why this would be the case - it's not like the private system in the US today has different premiums based on how much junk food you eat (the closest to that I've seen is higher premiums for tobacco users).
In my experience the reason Republicans are so interested in what people can buy with food stamps is that they want very much to punish people who are on food stamps. If they truly cared about the health of needy Americans there are a lot of other things they could do, or even a lot of things they could stop doing like making it more difficult to access health care, quackifying vaccine recommendations, holding press conferences in which they say nobody should take Tylenol under any circumstances, making dubious assertions about AIDS; the list goes on and on.
What if we just don't want to subsidize giving people lifelong obesity and metabolic disorders? Why does that necessarily imply we have to agree with you on other issues? Do we need to make it tribal and ascribe ulterior motives?
> giving people lifelong obesity and metabolic disorders
Is that a given? People can drink soda without getting fat. And plenty of people get quite large without ever drinking soda. This seems more personal, like intentionally causing suffering as a moral imperative.
Why should they not, what is with this parental-ism? Should Social Security recipients be able to buy candy? Should my employer get to choose what food I can purchase?
Food stamps are an inherently paternalistic program. The whole point is to ensure people get enough to eat, even when they can't or won't provide for themselves. Same with other voucher or in-kind welfare programs in housing, healthcare, education, etc.
A poor kid on food stamps should be able to get a birthday cake on their birthday. Anyone that believes otherwise definitely should never have kids or work with kids.
For exceptional items, can't the parent pay for them from non-SNAP money? For instance from the child tax credits they also get? SNAP's stated purpose is nutrition, not making birthdays fun.
Oh good, you have demonstrated how money is somewhat fungible and therefore any moralizing about what welfare is spent on is a little odd
>SNAP's stated purpose is nutrition
SNAPS purpose is dual, and it was always also about ensuring american farmers had more demand, including for corn syrup. Horrifically, EBT being spent on soda is intentional.
If that bothers you, we can reduce corn subsidies without taking candy from literal children, or keeping poor parents from buying chips.
Who cares? It's $5.00 to buy a box of cake mix and a can of frosting. Let poor people have fun sometimes instead of trying to use the welfare as a leash to harry them constantly about their choices.
If they want total freedom, they don't have to spend food stamps. They can always provide for themselves.
You are right, a single box of cake mix once a year is fine. But between banning processed foods, or allowing everything, the former is far closer to the "just cake once a year" scenario. Allowing unlimited spend on junk food will in most cases lead to worse outcomes.
"Let them eat cake"
I saw a homeless guy in the park eating a block of raw cake mix.
I go on HN to read thoughtful non-partisan commentary but the general mood seems to be "everything is bad" in certain threads even if that contradicts a previous popular HN consensus.
Lol I forgot about that. What was it? Pizza is a vegetable?
Pizza as a vegetable (because of tomato sauce) was California under Reagan. Michelle Obama said to eat healthy and exercise more, though "eat healthy" still used the MyPlate guidelines.
Reagan said that catsup is a vegetable, not pizza.
> Nor do I understand the negative reactions to new restrictions on SNAP - candy and sugary drinks are no longer eligible.
I can think of one issue here. Ultra-processed foods, candy, and sugary drinks are cheap and shelf-stable. They're cheap because they're subsidized. Fruits and vegetables are more expensive, and they don't last very long. So a person on a very limited SNAP budget will get less food under the new restrictions.
The answer, of course, is to make it so that fresh produce and other healthy options are cheaper than the junk food. I have a hard time seeing that happening, given how susceptible the administration is to being "lobbied".
The actual issue is that "Ultra-Processed" is EXTREMELY broad and vague.
For example, hot dogs are ultra-processed. Obviously hot dogs are not the healthiest food but also obviously "franks and beans" is a pretty good meal for a tight budget and is something you should be able to get with SNAP.
Franks and beans are not the best meal on the cheap. Sounds more expensive than cooking fresh and you're missing out on better nutrition.
For the most bang for your buck you want to be eating less expensive real protein like chicken and pork and filling up on salads. Limit carb intake from beans and other starches. Prefer fruit for carbs because it has fiber and vitamins you can't get anywhere else.
You are preposterously out-of-touch with reality here. "Filling up on salads" is healthy but it is FAR from the most "bang for your buck". And are seriously trying to say that beans aren't a good source of fiber and vitamins?
Sure you shouldn't eat hot dogs and baked beans three meals a day every day but you are absolutely out of your mind if you think cheap sausage and canned beans are bad to have in the house when you are struggling.
Oh well I guess I must have dreamed when I was broke and hungry.
In all seriousness, canned food is way more expensive than buying a pork butt and chicken. I don't think you read what I originally wrote.
I am reading what you wrote and disputing it but you don't seem to want to hear it.
I am saying that denying the sale of all "ULTRA PROCESSED" foods to people receiving food assistance is NOT helpful because deciding what counts as "ultra-processed" is too messy and imprecise.
You are trying to split hairs over the most cost-effective struggle meals.
I can indulge you.
---
Perdue Young Whole Chicken Fresh (~5lb) = $12.49
Oscar Mayer Original Uncured Turkey Chicken & Pork Wieners (10 count) $4.49 + 3x Bush's Best Original Baked Beans (16 oz.) $7.47 ($2.49 ea.) = 11.96 total
You eat half a can of beans and one hot dog per meal. That's six meals and four extra hot dogs you can do whatever else you want with.
You can definitely get six meals out of a whole chicken but it's going to be a lot more work plus the additional 50c cost (and that's ignoring the value of the four extra hot dogs). 1 hot dog + 8oz of beans is going to be a fairly similar portion to 1/6th the recoverable meat from a 5lb bird.
It should obviously go without saying but, since you seem to be a stickler, I should point out that there is nothing stopping you from eating chicken one week then frank & beans the next. Variety is the biggest part of a healthy diet.
Your body doesn't care about the weight of the food nor the quantity of items in the package.
You eat calories and process nutrients. You can make a lot more meals and a wider variety of recipes with a whole chicken than a pack of hot dogs.
Anyone who shops like you described is not being efficient with their money as long as they have their own kitchen. Poverty is a lot of possible scenarios. I'm not saying they're dumb or anything.
Nutrition is hard to think about when tempted by the modern convenient grocery store with limited money. Unit price has a way of messing with your head. I also get the practicality of having packaged and shelf stable food when you lack access to a freezer and can't stay somewhere for too long. It is what it is.
"What meals can I make with a given amount of money?" is a reasonable way to shop.
You said:
> Franks and beans are not the best meal on the cheap. Sounds more expensive than cooking fresh and you're missing out on better nutrition. > For the most bang for your buck you want to be eating less expensive real protein like chicken and pork and filling up on salads.
I gave you math on how you can take the money you would have spent on chicken and get essentially the same "bang for your buck" by spending it instead on canned beans and cheap sausage for the protein portion of your meals.
It is completely reasonable to allow people who receive money for food assistance to buy hot dogs.
It is completely unreasonable to disallow people who receive money for food assistance from purchasing anything "Ultra Processed" because "Ultra Processed" is a category too broad and loose to determine whether or not a given food item is "healthy".
Hotdogs are obviously bad, but beans are good. They are packed with fiber and protein.
Of course, your typical can of Bush’s baked beans is loaded with added sugar. Gotta get the kind that doesn’t have added sugar.
Beans are legitimately one of the most balanced foods out there. Yes, they have carbs (but they're more complex than the simple sugars in fruit), they also have a lot of fiber, protein and several key micro-nutrients. Not to mention, most people on SNAP have kids and good luck getting them to eat salads.
I think you answered your own question with the last sentence. Have cattle ranchers, chicken farmers, vegetable and fruit farmers lobby for same or higher subsidies than grains.
For what it's worth, meat is insanely cheap in the US due to lobbied subsidies as well. The produce is what we really need to subsidize.
> a person on a very limited SNAP budget will get less food under the new restrictions ... make it so that fresh produce and other healthy options are cheaper than the junk food
I'm confused by these statements. How are you deciding to measure the quantity of "food"? If you see food as a means to deliver nutrients, fresh produce is already far cheaper than junk food.
From the perspective of your body, you can sustain yourself much better on a smaller amount of nutrient dense calories than a larger amount of empty ones. Obesity is not merely an overconsumption of calories or a measure of food or body mass.
Restrictions on SNAP are tricky business. You can't ask someone on SNAP to spend time preparing food. Prepared meals are expensive, often not accessible, and sometimes difficult to prepare for people with certain disabilities. It might seem strange, but I have known people, very poor people, who rely on "foods in bar and drink form" out of necessity. I have known poor people for whom eating fruit is physically challenging.
SNAP changes like this may be better on a population health level, to be sure. On this I have no evidence. But each restriction placed on food for people living in destitution may mean some people go hungry. (And this excludes issues of caloric density.) I would like to see better data, but sadly, there is none.
+1 – it's all well and good for me to buy just some vegetables this week, because I have a pantry full of hundreds of dollars worth of basics, spices, a herb garden, bulk (more expensive) rice/pasta, etc. I also have a single 9-5 job so can spend an hour each day cooking.
But if I had an empty kitchen, lacked the funds to invest in bulk purchases, and had 30 minutes to cook and eat, I'd be eating very differently.
> Prepared meals are expensive
I'm not sure if you mean buying pre-prepared meals is expensive. If that's what you are saying, I agree.
But if you're stating that preparing meals (at your own place from raw ingredients) is expensive. That's simply not true, at all.
I would hope that it is clear from context that I mean purchasing pre-prepared meals is expensive.
Sounds farfetched. Especially if restriction is on candy and sodas
As others have pointed out, that's not what the restriction seems to be limited to. The distinction isn't based on sugar content but the amount of "processing", which rules out quite a lot of things beyond just candy and soda.
Nutrition science has come up with acceptable macronutrient distribution ranges (AMDR). The recommendation for adults is 45-65% of total calories from carbohydrates, 20-35% from fat, and 10-35% from protein. That is definitely not low carb.
The sources of those macronutrients also matter. The ideal range for saturated fat is 5-10% of total calories. Meat consumption, especially red meat, is associated with higher risk of colorectal cancer. Dairy consumption is associated with higher risk of prostate cancer.
I haven't read the new guidelines in detail but if they're recommending red meat and whole milk as primary foods, then they are not consistent with the research on cancer and cardiovascular disease risk and I doubt that people following them would meet the AMDRs or ideal saturated fat intake.
To be fair, those macronutrient guidelines were established not because of any special properties of those macros (give or take the nitrogen load from protein) but because when applied as a population-level intervention they encourage sufficient fiber, magnesium, potassium, etc. You can have 50% of your calories be from fats and still live a long, healthy life, and you can do so as a population (see, e.g. Crete and some other Mediterranean sub-regions in the early/mid-1900s). You can have a much higher protein intake and have beneficial outcomes too.
Your point about the sources mattering isn't tangential; it's the entire point. The reason the AMDR exists is to encourage good sources. A diet of 65% white sugar and 25% butter isn't exactly what it had in mind though, and it's those sources you want to scrutinize more heavily.
Even for red meat though, when you control for cohort effects, income, and whatnot, and examine just plain red meat without added nitrites or anything, the effect size and study power diminishes to almost nothing. It's probably real, but it's not something I'm especially concerned about (I still don't eat much red meat, but that's for unrelated reasons).
To put the issue to scale, if you take the 18% increased risk in colorectal cancer from red meats as gospel (ignoring my assertions that it's more important to avoid hot dogs than lean steaks), or, hell, let's double that to 36%, your increased risk of death from the intervention of adding a significant portion of red meat to your diet is only half as impactful as the intervention of adding driving to your daily activities.
The new guidelines seem to be better than just recommending more steaks anyway. They're not perfect, but I've seen worse health advice.
Well, there are two factors that go into the recommendations. As you mentioned, one is adequate micronutrients. The other is chronic disease risk reduction. The 5-10% of total calories from saturated fat recommendation falls into the latter category. The risk of meat and dairy is not just cancer, but saturated fat.
I would agree that with proper knowledge and planning, it's possible to reduce carbs and increase protein/unsaturated fats while maintaining adequate fiber and micronutrients. But in practice, I think it's much more common to see people taking low-carb diet recommendations as a license to eat a pound or more of meat per day, drink gallons of milk per week, and completely ignore fiber intake, which is objectively not healthy.
mostly because of the destruction of American science, public health and public safety the admin pushed through in order to publish this set of guidelines, instead of just hiring a professionally trained RD to write it up.
Didn’t those professionals give us the original food pyramid that told us to stuff our faces with bread? Weren’t they the same people that told us not to eat eggs because of cholesterol? And tell us to limit our fish consumption?
Maybe different areas of expertise aren’t equally valid, and even good experts often can’t see the forest for the trees in terms of developing actionable advice.
And tell us to limit our fish consumption?
The only recommendations to limit fish that I have seen are due to mercury exposure risks:
https://www.fda.gov/food/consumers/advice-about-eating-fish
Coal burning and incidental industrial releases drastically increased the amount of mercury in surface waters over the past century. The released mercury gets transformed by bacteria into organomercury compounds which are lipophilic and concentrate up the food chain, meaning that predator fish like tuna and swordfish can contain orders of magnitude more mercury than the water they live in.
There are plenty of fish with much lower mercury levels (like salmon, trout, and sardines):
https://www.fda.gov/food/environmental-contaminants-food/mer...
You can eat all the salmon you want without worrying about mercury, and I haven't seen government advice to the contrary.
Your first link recommends limiting fish for children to 2 servings per week, even from the “best choices” list. By contrast it recommends kids 1-5 have two servings a day of other meat and poultry: https://www.parkchildcare.ie/food-pyramid-for-1-5-year-old-c...
Thats tantamount to a recommendation that fish should comprise a minority of your protein, which is backwards. It’s almost certainly healthier overall for fish to be your primary protein source and to eat red meat, chicken, and pork sparingly. How many servings a week of fish do you think Japanese kids eat?
This is incorrect reasoning. Science is advancing. It is like saying we should not listen to physicists because "Didn't those physicists gave us the original heliocentric system?"
also misleading. Nutrition science did not give the "food pyramid" quoted above, historically, it was Dept of Agriculture and associated lobbyists.
The Department of Agriculture employs 2,000 scientists: https://www.ars.usda.gov/docs/aboutus/
Who was lobbied? The lobbyists can’t publish things in the Federal Register. How it works is they try to influence the experts at the agencies to support their position. That’s what lobbying is. It’s all laundered through experts both in the private sector and the government.
>How it works is they try to influence the experts at the agencies to support their position
The real winning move if you can afford it to pay for a bunch of academic labs who won't at the margin publish stuff that's bad for their sugardaddy. This way the lawmakers, the bureaucrats and the public discourse is all built upon numbers and information that is favorable to you. So then when those officials you bought make the "right" decisions they can do so in comfort knowing that their decisions are backed by the numbers.
> The real winning move if you can afford it to pay for a bunch of academic labs who won't at the margin publish stuff that's bad for their sugardaddy.
Yup. Scientists have bills to pay too.
This is an incorrect response in that this isn't about reasoning, this is about feels.
The food pyramid was the result of intense lobbying and political processes, not scientists and doctors.
No, that was the US Dept of Agriculture. You need to talk to an actual RD.
It was pushed by food lobbies, like a lot of topics in current admin
"The professionals" produced 2.5-3 laughably bad food pyramids depending on how you count. Of all the things this administration has done to "run around" the system on this or that issue, this is not gonna be one I'm gonna get pissed off about.
Food pyramid is a US Dept of Agriculture thing, not from any professional RD
Is the department of agriculture not "the professionals"?
And even if they weren't not a day goes by that government doesn't do things based on research/influence/numbers from academia that was produced with funding from a) the government b) the industry. So it's not like anything other option for deriving a food pyramid is free of questionable influence either.
Are you talking about "professionally trained nutritionists"?
Those people are worse than Astrologers.
At least astrologers stick to their fantasy, while, since I remember being old enough to count, I already lost track of how many times they've told us that "eggs are bad" and then "eggs are good" again, and then bad, and good, and... I've lost track.
Then they told us to eat cereal at breakfast, and that bread and potatoes are the basis of a good diet, then that fat is the killer and then that we should replace butter with plant based alternatives and the list goes on.
Nutritionists aren't scientists. They aren't even good at basic logic and coherence. So, no, I don't want them in charge of dictating policies.
That sounds more like the fad Atkin's weight loss diet that said you could eat unlimited meat/fat/protein, but no carbs.
This new JFK Jr diet has something in common with the Paleo "cave man" diet, which at least makes some sense in the argument ("this is what our bodies have evolved to eat") if not the specifics. I'm not sure where the emphasis on milk/cheese and eggs comes from since this all modern, not hunter-gatherer, and largely unhealthy, and putting red-meat at the top (more cholesterol, together with the eggs), and whole grain at the bottom makes zero sense - a recipe for heart attacks and colon cancer.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/07/rfk-jr-nutrition-guidelines-...
Eggs are very healthy. There's a lot of nutrients that are hard to get from other sources that eggs have in abundance. And it makes sense in just a common-sense sort of way -- if you're a chicken you want to surround your offspring with the best possible food you can as they grow.
With regards to dairy, it's more about a person's individual reaction to it. It's a similar argument with nutrient density (since milk is intended for growing offspring, obviously it's going to be very nutrient dense). The downside is potential inflammation or not having the enzymes to process it.
I would definitely not lump eggs and dairy as "bad" in any way though.
Also, the "cholesterol" thing is a very bad thing to focus on. Cholesterol is not bad! You need cholesterol. (What do you think cell membranes are partially composed of?
Whole grains are not as good as you think. Often, they're made from strains that are optimized for growing and robustness not nutrition. Also, unless you're exercising a lot you really don't need much in the way of carbs.
> Also, the "cholesterol" thing is a very bad thing to focus on. Cholesterol is not bad! You need cholesterol. (What do you think cell membranes are partially composed of?
There is also not a very strong connection between dietary cholesterol and serum levels, anyway.
There's certainly a difference between modern and ancient grain varieties, but OTOH whole grain bread is basically what fed at least the western world for the last 2000 years - bread was the center of the roman diet and also of the medieval diet, which seems more than long enough (~100 generations - evolution is fast) for this to be the natural "our bodies evolved for this" diet that we should be targeting!
As far as eggs and dairy go, sure they are healthy for who is meant to be consuming them - baby chickens and baby mammals, but that doesn't mean they are good for us in excess.
There have been, and continue to be, so may flip flops in dietary recommendations and what is good/bad for you, that it seems common sense is a better approach. All things in moderation, and indeed look to what our relatively recent ancestors have been eating to get an idea of what our bodies are evolved to eat - whole foods and not processed ones and chemical additives.
I don't think 2,000 years is enough, but am not an expert. The main thing that grains and bread did was make it a lot easier for more people to get through lean times without starving. It also allowed people to specialize: not everyone needed to be a hunter/gatherer.
20,000 years maybe yes. But we have not been agricultural for that long. And that's why grain-based food still is not something we're well adapted to.
Ancient grains are great! But frankly, you're probably not going to be finding Einkhorn grains in you're grocery store. It's not just the way whole grains are processed, it's also about the plants they grow from. Also, the way ancient grains are processed is not particularly profitable (they need to sit and ferment, for instance, and the grain itself is a lot lower yield).
If you want to eat ancient grains I'd say go for it, but when I talk about whole grains I talk about what you're going to find in an average grocery store, and even what you find at a place like Whole Foods is pretty bad.
I highly suspect that nobody other than body builders are eating eggs in excess (if that's even possible -- what bad nutrients are in eggs?). Eggs are kind of a pain in the ass to cook (other than hard boiling), and most processing is about convenience.. In any case, things like choline are hard to get from other sources, and I think it's not that wild to assume our ancestors loved to raid birds nests for nutrient dense eggs.
Agreed on a lot of flip flops in dietary recommendations, but that definitely doesn't mean that the classic food pyramid was anywhere close to correct.
If you're looking for an excellent supplier of einkhorn, I'd suggest Bluebird Grain Farms. (They're local to me, so I'm a bit biased of course. But they are a great group, and their flours and grains are excellent).
https://bluebirdgrainfarms.com/
Humans have been eating eggs for approximately 6 million years, a few years more than bonbons...
> You need cholesterol.
Your body produces cholesterol naturally, without any meat or dairy. In my case it actually produces way more than I need, even on a vegan diet, because of genetic factors. People should test their LDL and evaluate whether eating cholesterol is healthy _for themselves_ as it’s different for everyone.
Common sense says that adults are not embryos and humans are not chickens, so if eggs are nutritious for adult humans, it's more of a happy coincidence.
Our hunter gather ancestors ate eggs when they could find them, probably often uncooked. What they generally didn't come across were trees full of snickers bars, coke and Wonder Bread.
Dietary cholesterol does not affect blood serum cholesterol and recommendations to limit cholesterol intake were removed from AHA and ADA guidelines in 2011 and 2013 respectively... the fact that this "common knowledge" still persists is disappointing.
The Paleo diet is utter nonsense. Human gut biome and ability to process different foods evolves far far far faster than that. We are nothing like our paleo ancestors.
This new pyramid is obviously FAR healthier than the previous one. The reason it's being opposed is partisan politics.
the reason it's being _changed_ is obviously partisan politics.
Nah, probably just shifting fronts of lobbying. That said new recommendations match way closer what I consider to be a good diet for myself (more calories from fats, less from carbs). Of course everything in moderation.
I think the zeitgeist is starting to turn on the high-protein diet recommendations:
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2025/11/looking-to-bu...
There was a story about this in the NYT recently (can't find it) and IIRC, it basically said protein is out and fiber is in. It wasn't that simple, but that was my takeaway.
Fiber is stupidly easy to supplement, something that’s not talked about enough.
A glass of water with psylium husk a day and you solve a lot of modern diet problems.its also super cheap,a $20 bag can last you a year.
Supplements don't seem to work as well as getting fibre from your diet.
Supplemental fiber is mostly worthless.
Honestly, you can find studies to prove just about anything when it comes to nutrition. Too much money involved. Sometimes you have to use common sense or try different diets to see how your body reacts. I find "high fiber" and "low protein" to be a suspicious suggestion though. Protein generally has a small insulin response, your body actually needs protein, and if things like the "protein leverage hypothesis" are correct it can also help with satiety. Fiber, on the other hand, is literally food stuff that can't be digested. It can be helpful for your colon bacteria, but that's about it.
Just because an article comes from Harvard doesn't mean it's correct -- Harvard scientists were also behind the original food pyramid, and were likely paid off by the sugar industry.
Fiber greatly lowers your blood sugar response because you can't digest it. It also lowers your blood cholesterol for the same reason, so it's often recommended for those with a risk of CVD to eat more fruits and vegetables. It also protects against colorectal cancer for similar reasons.
Turns out just slowing down digestion can have a lot of benefits.
Also, most Americans eat very, very little fiber. Anything is an improvement. I believe the FDA recommendation is 30 grams a day, and most Americans eat, like, 2.
However, most Americans are not deficient in protein. They eat lots of meat, and very little veggies.
Well, true on the blood sugar response, but you can also lower the blood sugar response by not eating high-glycemic-index foods in the first place. Or, you could eat resistant starches if you really want a starch. So I don't necessarily disagree with you, but unless you're living a very active lifestyle I think it'd be better to remove carbs than add fiber.
The thing is basically nobody eats enough fiber, so that's one big ticket optimization you can make. And the trouble with "eat less carbs" is that people take that and run with it, and cut out fruits and veggies, which is not going to help them.
I agree people should eat less carbs in general, but we need to be careful. Ultimately, replacing kale or something with bacon, which is basically tobacco in meat form, isn't going to improve their health. Eat less carbs, eat more protein, but eat the right protein, and the right carbs.
> Sometimes you have to use common sense or try different diets to see how your body reacts.
I sometimes wonder if the complexity of the human body doesn't stop us from seeing things that can have great positive effect on a set of people because it's counteracted by the effect on another set of people so the result in the whole is cancelled out. I now wonder if the statistic methods used in these studies take this into account.
All this to say that I approve of controlled self-experimentation, but you need to be very rigorous and brutally honest. Most people are not.
i think about this a lot and i genuinely believe that for every fringe diet or supplementation regimen, there exists a population it would genuinely benefit, for at least some point in their lives
but it's tricky to figure out and i assume the consensus rules are good enough for most people
Too much protein is bad for your kidneys.
For healthy people kidney damage starts at around 2.5 g/kg/day, which is about 5.5 pounds of steak before cooking for a 160 pound man.
How are you calculating that?
Google tells me that 2 lbs of steak contains between 225 and 270 grams of protein. That would be well over the threshold that the article I linked to a couple of posts up mentions:
> Your kidneys process all the extra nitrogen from the protein, and when you’re eating 200 grams a day, sometimes they just can’t keep up and they get stressed.
Beyond the protein insulin response... when you have protein with sufficient fat, the insulin effect is much, much lower still. I tend to suggest that people try to get about 0.5g fat to 1g protein (which is slightly more calories from fat than protein). I think the aversion to fat is problematic and likely a lack of sufficient well rounded fat intake is likely a factor in the fertility and other hormonal issues in western society today.
The recommendation wasn't for high fiber, low protein. It was moderate protein and higher fiber.
I still find it suspicious. "Moderate" protein sounds great, because "moderate" anything sounds great. The question is what "moderate" actually means. I think the people that encourage more protein are generally suggesting that the guidelines for "moderate" are actually too low.
Tangent, but it reminds me of how people consider a "balanced" diet to be 1/3rd protein, 1/3rd fat, 1/3rd carbs. It sounds good, until you consider the purpose of carbs. Carb's aren't inherently bad of course, but they have glucose which stimulates an insulin response, resulting in storing more food as fat. And considering how many obese people we have, the "balanced" diet seems to be very unbalanced. The thing with carbs is, you really only need to take them in if you're very actively doing anaerobic exercise. If you're doing that, great! Then you should eat carbs. If you're sitting at a desk 8 hours a day and not exercising at all, then you really don't need much in the way of carbs at all.
Higher fiber seems, at best, to not move the needle much at all. At worst you could irritate various gut linings. Fiber in things like fruit can be good because it moderates the absorption of fructose, but I generally don't think you need to supplement fiber at all.
Fiber also gives your colon material to push against, adds volume to poop, and helps clean and clear you out when you poop.
If you're on a low-carb diet you should supplement fiber.
Unless you're doing something blatantly wrong or have a very specific disorder like coeliac, diet just doesn't have very much influence on health. There are a very wide range of diets that are more-or-less equally healthy, within a margin of error. Humans are highly adaptable omnivores that have evolved to survive and thrive on a broader range of foods than pretty much any other species. The data seems so mixed because the effect sizes of reasonable interventions are so small - a tiny signal drowned out by noise.
The entire problem is that most people in high- and middle-income countries are in fact doing something blatantly wrong - they are consistently eating vastly more calories than they use. Some of those people are ignorant of what 2000 to 2500 calories actually looks like, some are deluded, but a very large proportion know damned well that they're eating far too much and do it anyway.
The obesogenic environment that we now live in is partly due to the influence of the processed foods industry, but in large part it's simply a product of abundance. Before the late 20th century, it was simply inconceivable that poor people could afford to become morbidly obese. Agricultural productivity has improved beyond all recognition and the world is flooded with incredibly cheap food of all kinds.
We've spent the last few decades trying to push back against that with all manner of initiatives intended to endgender behavioural change, with very little success. It doesn't really matter what guidance we give people when they have shown a consistent inability or unwillingness to follow it.
If we're actually serious about the effects of diet on public health, I think there are only two credible options - extremely heavy-handed regulation, or the mass prescribing of GLP-1 receptor agonists. All of the other options are just permutations of "let's do more of the thing that hasn't worked".
If the current government gave me 500 dollars and told me the sky was blue I'd start checking to be sure it wasn't a scam, yeah? Even if they say something that sounds true you want to look for the trick.
Yep. I switched to this sort of diet a few months back and there's been no downsides. I've gotten needed weight loss, more energy, better skin, and better mood.
There was a temporary period where I had some GI issues from changing what I ate very abruptly, but that wore off as my gut bacteria adapted
There is no public health consensus advocating for widesoread adoption of the diet RFK Jr is pushing here. There are significant parts of this that if anything the consensus suggests is unhealthy.
It's a fad diet being recommended, and parts of the advice being good don't make it good overall.
This is not consistent with multiple doctors over the years recommending eating less meat (specially beef), less cheese. The only part that is consistent with most doctors is the base thesis of eating more whole foods.
Based on the science appendix it seems like the inclusion of a "low carb diet" is more toward disease treatment and not health promotion. This would be antithetical to the DGA in years past and is kind of useless. The appendix itself acknowledges that the long term effects of a "low carb diet" are muted in the long term, which is probably why you would never hear it hawked by a nutrition professional as a healthy eating pattern.
The restrictions on SNAP are insidious because SNAP is supposed to enable one to live a normal life -- and that includes occasionally buying things that are not "healthy" in a bubble. The mantra that many health professionals will use is "there are no unhealthy foods, only unhealthy diets". Combine all that background with traditional stigma associated with SNAP/food stamp benefits and a picture starts to emerge of why policy was to embrace more foods and how this administration is often called the "administration of harm".
> Nor do I understand the negative reactions to new restrictions on SNAP - candy and sugary drinks are no longer eligible.
Because poor people should be allowed to enjoy some of life's pleasures as well.
> Nor do I understand the negative reactions to new restrictions on SNAP - candy and sugary drinks are no longer eligible
My understanding is that it adds a complex layer of regulation where one did not previously exist. Large retailers and grocers have the systems that can accurately track this. (Essentially: does your POS have the ability to sync with the Federally Approved Foods For Poors list or not.)
Smaller convenience stores (more common in places where poor people live) are less likely to have the resources be able to comply. Rather than get sanctioned for accidentally selling a Gatorade on SNAP, they will simply pull out of SNAP altogether. This means that even the non-sugary foods they have will no longer be available to people on SNAP.
The net effect is expected to be to remove SNAP purchasing ability from entire geographies. I understand the effect is expected to be most pronounced in rural and dense urban areas.
I freaked out when I realized I had to change my diet. "What do I eat then?" was my constant mantra for six months. Looking back, it wasn't that bad but something in me really freaked out at having to change a habit (that I wanted to change...)
> I don't understand people freaking out over this
Its not like it is a tan suit.
A lot of red meat is probably one angle I can’t get behind. They are very high in cholesterol and triglycerides which are deadly for the heart over the long haul.
Is pretty clear that eating cholesterol doesn't lead to higher blood cholesterol. It just doesn't matter.
No, doctors still recommend limiting the intake of cholesterol in food, and also saturated fat. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholesterol#Medical_guidelines...
https://www.heart.org/en/news/2023/08/25/heres-the-latest-on...
Its actually not "pretty clear"—about 25-30% of people are hyper responders who are impacted by dietary cholesterol.
You wouldn’t happen to know the specific genetic markers for this, it’s the only thing I’d like to know about myself so I could eat eggs guilt free. A cursory search keeps giving me not the results I want to see.
From ://nutritionfacts.org/video/dietary-guidelines-eat-as-little-dietary-cholesterol-as-possible/
"Most studies regarding cholesterol are bought and paid for by the egg industry. "
One of those Egg Council creeps got to you, too, huh?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuojmEoI51w
The problem is that when people say "red meat" they're almost always referring to the modern "hamburger-like substance" which almost certainly high on the ultra-processed scale.
An actual steak or hamburger ground at a butcher would be a pretty gigantic step up for most people.
No it’s just the contents of regular red meat. But there’s also a genetic component to it. Some people are more negatively affected than others.
Your colon doesn't care how expensive the beef was.
The whole thrust of modern nutritional research is to prove that your statement is wrong.
For example, a steak is better than pastrami. This is the point of not eating "ultra-processed" food.
This department is led by an insane person who constantly says ridiculous things. It's not a "purely political reflex" to have an initial bad reaction to anything he puts out. The fact that this is fairly sensible is quite surprising. I'm sure it won't last, and we'll soon be back to saying Advil causes schizophrenia or whatever the next round of madness is.
While I despise this administration, as a celiac I’m very hopeful for any cultural shift away from grains. People truly do not realize how often they will reach for some processed bread for nearly every single meal.
"hell hath no fury like taking away nerds' Mountain Dew and Flamin' Hot Cheetos"
Its an addiction. Try taking away an alcoholic's alcohol and sit back and enjoy the infinite rationalizations about how its heart healthy and lowers stress and its just a couple a night, etc etc.
The mythical "doctors" recommending high protein.. Yeah okay bud.
I think this is at least better than the old food pyramid, though not perfect. It's a step in the right direction.
What I hate, and react against, is the package deal. We get a better food pyramid, but we also get antivax imbeciles and a resurgence in easily preventable diseases. We get an official nod of approval given to idiots who think you can treat cancer with "alternative" treatments. We get blaming autism on Tylenol with incomplete and inadequate data or, wait, maybe not, or maybe, or whatever that was.
I think it reflects a deeper problem though. The "crunchy" "natural" alt-med orbits have usually had better ideas about nutrition. They've historically been right about whole vs. processed foods, more protein and fats and less simple carbs, sugar being bad, etc. Unfortunately they've historically been wrong about most other things. They're wrong about vaccines, wrong about just how powerful and effective diets can be, mostly wrong about psych meds, and wrong about giving the nod to unmitigated quackery like homeopathy.
I also think that tends to be a common problem with any and all populism, whether left or right. The present establishment may be corrupt or broken, but replacing it is hard, especially when it tends to have a talent monopoly. "Serious" people who go into medicine go to college, then grad school / med school, then get licensed, etc., and pick up establishment views. The people who want to do medicine but don't take this path tend to be amateurs and quacks and weird ideologues.
Venezuela's been in the news lately. My understanding of what happened to their oil industry is: they had it working okay with professionals doing it, and then there was a populist revolution. Then they kicked out all the professionals. Then they had no idea how to run an oil industry. The professionals were linked to a foreign power and probably taking too much profit at the expense of the Venezuelan people, yes, but they also knew how to extract petrol.
Edit: You see more sympathy here than many other educated places for this stuff, and there's a reason for that.
I think CS people are extremely open to autodidactism, probably too open, and I think that's because CS and programming is one of the few serious fields where it is actually common for an autodidact to equal or exceed a trained professional.
The zero capital cost near-zero real world implication nature of computational experimentation facilitates this. You can just read open literature and sit and play until you get good and it harms nobody and costs almost nothing. Math is another field where there have been genius autodidacts that have made huge discoveries. The arts are obviously mostly like this, excluding those that are very hard to learn alone or have capital costs.
Medicine is definitely not a field like this. I don't think you can autodidact medicine. As a result, doctors outside the establishment are usually not good. There have been historical examples, but few, and most of them came up through the ranks of real medicine before pushing a radical idea that turned out to be right.
Also note that even in CS and math, most outsider ideas are wrong. Outsider ideas are kind of like high risk / high reward investments. It's very hard for anyone, insider-trained or not, to formulate a deeply contrarian or wholly original idea that is correct, but when someone does it makes the news because it's both rare and often high impact. The hundreds of thousands to millions of deeply contrarian or original ideas that were worthless or wrong don't make the news.
I think you're worried too much about specific tribes and groups, and less about what information is good or bad. End of the day almost any source is going to tell you some things that are useful, some things that are useless, and some things that are actively harmful. I'm not trying to say all sources are equal, but mainstream medicine has a lot to answer for in terms of giving bad advice for decades (both now and historically). For a long time mainstream medicine also thought smoking was healthy and bloodletting was a way to treat infections. I don't say that to mean "don't see doctors" or "get your nutritional advice from chiropractors", I just think it's worth pointing out that with ANY source you need to wary. Autodidactism is a very good thing IF you use critical thinking when evaluating your sources.
I think the point being made is that the challenge is when it comes to medicine, lay people can't even begin to understand the research and can't form their own opinion. So for those of us without MD's, we HAVE to trust someone to tell us what works and what doesn't. Giving mixed signals really screws that up as I can't personally assess what is good medicine and what isn't.
Regarding, smoking and bloodletting, the former was bought and paid for by industry, that is just fraud. For the latter, there are cases where bloodletting actually works. Medieval medicine isn't the backward thinking we often ascribe to it and many would argue that it wasn't a "Dark" ages at all. There are even modern instances where maggots are the best solution for cleaning wounds. Even given that history, the recent advances by people whose jobs I can't even begin to understand, can nuke my entire immune system to treat a cancer and bring me back to full health. That is not something an autodidactic can do.
Just for anyone reading - the food pyramid was canned over 15 years ago. MAHA promotes it as absurd in order to criticize it even though food guidelines have been evidence-based and extremely reasonable since the early Obama years. Their entire grift is built on deceit.
> What I hate, and react against, is the package deal. We get a better food pyramid, but we also get antivax imbeciles and a resurgence in easily preventable diseases.
Clearly if you eat a T-bone steak and half a dozen eggs daily combined with 25 pull-ups, you don’t need any vaccines.
You're getting downvoted for snark, but that's exactly what a lot of layperson MAHA people think.
Frankly I just don’t trust federal health info while RFK jr. Is at the helm. 2 days ago they reduced the recommended scheduled vaccines from 19->11 with absolutely no evidence or process. All vibes and conspiracies.
Why should I trust them with the food pyramid? How do I know if anyone who actually has expertise was consulted when his signature move has been axe experts and bring in “skeptics” with no actual background since day 1?
I’m supposed to play ball and accept health advice from the antivaxxer who has led to countless unnecessary deaths? Who walked up with the president and said “Tylenol is linked to autism” with no evidence?
No way.
Edit: it’s worth mentioning that he and a bunch of “MAHA” proponents cite the natural and healthy food in Europe but never want to use the dirty word that makes it happen: regulation. If we are serious about unhealthy additives and other food concerns, then we need robust regulations. They aren’t serious about change. It’s easy to go “we’re gonna have everyone eat healthy and natural stuff” but when it counts they won’t do what is necessary. [also toned down my heated language]
I agree. This is nearly the exact diet anyone with credibility has suggested for a long long time. If you get into the bro-science(which I believe tends to front run mainstream by a long ways), this is the diet every athlete and gym rat has been doing for years and years, with AMAZING results.
The bro science would tell you the protein target is still too low too :)
That's starting to change... mostly in that exceeding 14g:1kg ratio mentioned in TFA is being shown to have worse results, so some more recent recommendations are that you need to get enough protein, but not too much.
My own opinion is that you should also get at least 0.5g fat to 1g protein as a baseline... more would be for energy in lieu of carbs.
> you should also get at least 0.5g fat to 1g protein as a baseline
And hormonal health
For all the lunacy of RFK this somehow is actually a really good set of guidelines? Certainly better than the previous version. I didn't expect that to be honest.
I had a similar reaction. Although I can't help but notice that even in something like this it included the now obligatory combative culture war framing with "we are ending the war on protein".
It’s even more ridiculous because Protien has been like the no 1 promoted macronutrient for the last decade of nutrition advice.
Pretty sure nobody reputable has ever said “eat less protein”
It must be such a tiring way to live, constantly enflamed in imaginary thought wars.
That's not how it works, they're just inflating the importance of their work by elevating it to a battlefield, and they're the heroes.
You see it across all kinds of industries. Presumably each individual is just engaged in the solitary imaginary thought war. Surely they're not soldiers on multiple fronts. Superheroes?
There is a difference between inflating your work, and flat out lie. The previous guidelines weren’t against protein at all. The mentioned war didn’t exist at all in these. The protein target is about the same as 10 years ago. Back then the only recommendation regarding this was, that more seafood and nuts would be better for almost everybody, and for some people less meat. So generally, that we should consume more protein. So the “war” wasn’t there.
Au contrair, wars invigorate reactionaries, they don’t know any other way to live.
wars invigorate donations, they don’t know any other way to make money
Those DEMOCRAT SOYBOYS are gonna hate this, but I'm gonna say it anyways. Today we're joining the WAR on protein- ON THE SIDE OF THE PROTEIN.
It's an idiocracy bit, the continual flanderization of the USA. It reminds me of carlin's act about how everything we do has to be contextualized into war: we can't just solve homelessness, we have to declare WAR on homelessness (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lncLOEqc9Rw).
Going to be pretty crazy when they find out soy is actually a good source of protein.
Also you can make all kinds of delicious food with soybeans
It was a low bar. The previous nutrition guidelines were garbage for generations
Which ones? The guidelines this replaced were "half your plate should be fruits and vegetables, the other half protein and grains (at least half of which should be whole grains)." That's not way different from this.
There are differences: the previous guidelines are very down on saturated fat, for example. But I feel like a lot of people are imagining that this is replacing the old food pyramid with the huge grain section at the bottom bigger than everything else, when that's been gone for over a decade.
Realistically I don't think these guidelines really have much effect at all, except maybe things like school lunch programs that may be downstream of them.
> which ones?
The literal food pyramid that’s printed god knows where and that is recommended in many countries due to US recommendations.
Have you been to the site OP linked?
The pyramid references in the link is from 1992, it even says so on the page. I think that going to war against the recommendations from 1992 feels a bit...dishonest?
How do we marry that "dishonesty" with the fact that the previous food pyramid was the dietary guidelines officially endorsed by the US government, represented in posters and taught in primary school classrooms?
Because there have been different FDA food pyramids since then. The one people popularized hasn't been the recommendation for decades
And what does it say about traditional governance that it takes a someone like RFK to actually do anything about it.
A stopped clock is right twice a day. A running clock set incorrectly is correct zero times a day. If you have an incorrect clock, the solution isn't to stop the clock, it's to set it correctly and fix the process
People don't notice "incorrect" as much as "stopped".
Here's hoping that now that we've stopped our incorrect clock, the next step may very well be setting it correctly.
I think it says that industries have a lot of power over governments in the US, especially when they are critical to people's survival. The food industry has enormous power, maybe more than any other industry in the US. Few other industries mint their own laws that fly in the face of the constitution as well as the food industry. Ag Gag laws are crazy. People talk about people being labelled terrorists for activities that are obviously not terrorism. Animal Rights activists who go to extremes have been familiar with that for a while now.
That a majority of your populace not caring about how they're governed is bad for a democratic republic.
or maybe the nutrition guidelines just don't matter that much.
I disagree I think nutrition guidence is extremely important and in the precense of horrible examples nations get really unhealthy. The only country 1st world country not to have really obese people is Japan (~5% obese ~20% overweight). (~35% obsese ~70% overweight US) and I'd wager a large part of that is the fact that kids cook for themselves in school so they learn early what a reasonable meal is. They also learn how to cook not that they do that forever but setting reasonable food expectations is extremely important.
Being obese as a kid is almost causal for being obese later in life[1] as becoming obese screws up a lot of your bodies biology permenantly. You can of course change and become healthier but many lingering symptoms linger regardless of you losing weight. While still 70% obese adults were not obese as children 80% of obese children end up being obese.
Open to other ideas but school meals and peoples relationship with food is extremely important to maintaining weight in my experience.
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26696565/
> The only country 1st world country not to have really obese people is Japan (~5% obese ~20% overweight). (~35% obsese ~70% overweight US) and I'd wager a large part of that is the fact that kids cook for themselves in school so they learn early what a reasonable meal is.
There might also be a genetic factor, why japanese are less obese or overweight, because the difference for diabetes patients between US and japan is a lot smaller.
There is no genetic factor because when Japanese people move to the States they are as obese as america's within 2 generation. I want to find the study but I think they end up being physically lighter because of other factors but are just as obese or overweight as americas[1]. The reasoning from the paper is that Japanese 2nd generation adopted western cultures eating habits
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7610102/
That's clearly true, given people by and large know what's good and bad for them but their consumption choices need to factor in a much larger set of pressing constraints like price, availability, and readiness and more abstract constraints like "am I able to be at home with my child and cook for them or do I need to work a second job to make ends meet?" I will not trust a single word from RFK's mouth until he has something to say about food deserts and prices and a plan to do something about it. Until then, he's done the easiest part which bureaucrats specialize in, which is publishing an updated set of guidelines.
What does it say about the current administration that appointed a science-denying halfwit to run HHS and knowingly kill children with his anti-vaxx bullsh*t?
And 52 GOP coward senators that approved the idiot. The only stand out was Mitch McConnell because he was almost paralyzed by polio as a child and knows first hand the damage RFK is doing.
I'm amazed the new guidelines don't recommend a daily portion of roadkill, preferably raw.
from what i can tell, most of this is existing stuff that advocates have been trying to push for a while now.
i think it's a perfect example of why advocates for any policy should have specific, achievable, and well-documented goals - you never know who might be an ally. politicians don't want to do this sort of detailed work, they're looking for preexisting policy they can champion, and if you're standing there ready to hand it to them when they're looking for it you get get good stuff done.
Yeah, I was about to say this.
Even before RFK Jr rubbed his metaphorical nutsack all over our healthcare system, doctors pretty much always told me to eat better. They told me to avoid processed foods, avoid sugar, and focus on fiber and protein.
I don't know why RFK Jr. is getting credit for telling people to eat healthy, especially since some of his recommendations (e.g. telling people to eat french fries if they're fried in beef tallow) are actively bad and will likely lead to people becoming more overweight and less healthy.
Because nobody else changed the food pyramid to be somewhat not-garbage until him. Who else would you congratulate for this specific action? Your own personal doctor??
Michelle Obama provided very similar guidance in around 2011 and every conservatively collectively lost their shit over it.
The food pyramid wasn't really used in recent years by the US government, and changed to "MyPlate" in 2011, and if you actually read its guidelines nothing on there is terribly offensive.
I post this elsewhere but:
I have not seen the pyramid with bread, cereal, rice and pasta at the base pushed for at least ~20 years. Maybe it was 25-30 years ago when I saw it pushed seriously in school and even then I did not see people taking it seriously outside of those lessons, as in people actively calling it questionable.
Where in the world was this old pyramid still being pushed?
We haven't had a food pyramid for like twenty years. Yes, other people have "changed the food pyramid to be somewhat not-garbage" before RFK.
> Because nobody else changed the food pyramid to be somewhat not-garbage until him.
The food pyramid hasn't been a thing for more than a decade. He did bring it back.
> Who else would you congratulate for this specific action?
The people who pushed for stuff like this more than a decade ago, but conservatives opposed it because it was done by a black lady.
It's a pretty straight-forward question - you can just say "Michelle Obama" or whoever you're referring to instead. I never understand the desire to actively present yourself as someone throwing a tantrum.
If that's not who you're referring to, please correct me.
You made a claim about how RFK Jr. was the only person to fix the food pyramid.
It is unlikely that if you are old enough to vote that you do not remember that Michelle Obama tried to make a more healthy food criteria, and as such it’s very easy to assume that you are acting in bad faith when you say something about RFK Jr that is objectively not true.
It’s a pretty bad assumption. You should pay a lot more attention to Hanlon’s Razor.
I don’t know much at all about Michelle’s actions. Similarly, I don’t know much about Melania’s actions. You say she tried to - so… she didn’t do it? If not, I don’t see how this makes my comment “objectively untrue”?
Reminds me of something said about Pete Hegseth:
Sure he may be a meathead moron who can only advocate that the military should get jacked, but if the military really DOES need to get in better shape and his brainiac predecessors weren’t actually doing anything about that, he’s actually functionally smarter than them.
So to answer your question, if RFK is doing the thing that needs to be done, he should get the credit.
I don’t know enough about the military to say for sure if Pete Hegseth’s stuff is stupid or reductive. I suspect it is, I am pretty sure that the military has had pretty aggressive physical training for decades and he contributed literally nothing to this conversation (like basically everything the Trump admin does that isn’t actively destructive), but maybe I am wrong.
The food pyramid was removed in 2011 and replaced with MyPlate, which was much more reasonable than the food pyramid. Of course, it was heavily criticized by conservatives because they claimed it was a “nanny state”.
But of course, like everyone in Trump’s circle, RFK Jr. rebrands someone else’s work, pretends he is the first person to ever suggest eating healthy, and then every stupid Trump voter with the apparent memory retention of a goldfish acts like he was the first person to ever suggest eating healthy.
I’m pinning the blame for the frustrating animate-while-you-scroll design squarely on RFK.
Apple has been using this UX for years. Blaming it on RFK is ridiculous.
It actually behaves surprisingly well when you just scroll with the spacebar, as I always do[1].
[1] note: using this method (spacebar to jump one screenful, and shift-spacebar to go back up) on sites that insist on doing the "sTiCkY hEaDeR" idiocy results in losing a line or two on every page, so, I guess, don't get too used to it as it's hard to use today.
I can’t find the space bar on my iPhone and I’m afraid to ask now.
It's next to the period.
it's a terrible design and i can't believe they've done this to the american people
Better than which one? I don't think it's really an improvement over either the exercise slice pyramid nor the "choose my plate" recommendation. It is better than the popular one from the 90s though, sure.
https://www.familyconsumersciences.com/2011/06/usda-food-pyr...
The problem in my eyes is that it's performative. They're making this announcement as if they're doing something revolutionary (they're switching the food pyramid diagram around) while at the same time doing so much to damage the health of Americans: dramatically cutting healthcare access, bringing vaccine denialism to the mainstream, holding press conferences in which they wildly assert that nobody should ever take Tylenol, elevating discourse around quackerism like Methylene blue. The list goes on. And they're making this announcement after spending the entirity of the Obama administration vilifying Flotus for trying to raise awareness of healthy eating.
Its the same thing with eliminating red40 dye. its a crumb. At the very least they should end corn syrup subsidies. Its telling how people often bring up people buying candy with food stamps, but never trace the source of the problem back to how we subsidize bad food. America has a huge blindspot for corporate welfare
Yeah I'm failing to see the problem here. They are very common sense guidelines for a population that is missing the mark big time.
Sure. Give him a participation trophy. Assuming the guidelines aren't just to promote favored industries like meat production.
The problem is framing this as "most americans are sick" and blaming it on diet.
40% of the population is obese. The framing seems on point to me. The actual advice is less so. Even more red meat is not the solution.
You don't think that's in part because of economics, education, healthcare, or other factors? The framing of this site is that it is purely a "you're eating wrong" problem.
A large part of the world population is poor, and they do not have the same level of health problems, nor are they similarly obese. Not purely diet related, but a huge part of it for sure.
There's absolutely no need for the average American to eat more protein, we are eating more protein than ever and health outcomes are not improving. Likewise, the dairy intake recommendation is not backed by any science whatsoever.
When I went as a kid with my parents to the US, there was this 'milk, it does a body good' commercial playing all the time. While in my country there was already talk that it really doesn't do a body good. Not sure what it ended up with, but we definitely never had the kind of gallons of milk in the fridge and grabbing cartons when you want something to drink.
Most of it seems fine, although eating even more meat than we already do is a bit perplexing.
The new "guidelines" for alcohol are pretty laughable though. I say that as someone who enjoys his fair share of beers. “The implication is don’t have it for breakfast," <- direct quote from celebrity Dr Oz during the press conference.
Will this cause you to update your priors about RFK?
There is some good health advice mixed in with the rest of the MAHA lunacy, particularly around diet and exercise.
Unfortunately their stances on vaccines, supplements, and mental health make are still awful
This has been the running theme so far: Big talk to energize the base and make a splash, followed by actual policy implementations that are much more down to earth.
Remember all the talk about banning COVID vaccines? In the end they just changed the wording of the federal recommendations and included things like "having a sedentary lifestyle" as one of the vague reasons to get a COVID vaccine. In some states you had to get a doctor to write a prescription, annoyingly, but the overall picture is that it's still much easier to get a COVID vaccine in the US than under something like the NHS.
Too late to edit, but I see I'm getting downvoted.
To clarify, I'm not in support of the actions or the administration. I'm just pointing out that this is becoming a trend where they say one thing but do something milder.
Regarding the NHS: Here's a link showing NHS COVID-19 vaccine eligibility, which is highly restricted relative to the access we enjoy in the United States: https://staustellhealthcare.nhs.uk/surgery-information/news/...
Again, I'm not saying the current system is good or that the NHS has it right, but trying to put it in perspective.
I'm surprised that governments didn't take this problem more seriously. Obesity is a huge problem, people have been ignoring it only because improvements in medicine have been offsetting the general health decline. Without the medical improvements that save the life of obese people, life expectancy would have decreased. I don't expect the Trump administration to make the best decisions but at least they are taking it somewhat more seriosly.
I don't believe the creators of this propaganda take this problem seriously at all. Their actions speak far louder than their words, even words on a page that scrolls weird like it's 2015.
Republicans were actively angry at past attempts to fight obesity or limit sugar.
There is another side to the nutrition recommendations beyond pure nutrition and that's economics. Pro business Republicans were loathe to anger big food producers.
On the flip side, this new food guide is now advocating a diet that is far more expensive for average consumers at a time when food inflation is already hurting so many households.
There remains concerns about saturated fat, especially for those with high cholesterol levels. I recognize that mistakes have been made in the past (low fat diets, fear of salt, etc), but it seems like RFK et al are driven by ideology rather than science.
RFK is a pretty fit, healthy guy. Whatever he believes is certainly working.
He spent 15 years as a heroin junkie. I sure hope that doesn't show up in the US RDA.
He has bad skin, which is surely a sign something about his lifestyle is not so healthy.
A friend of mine is in great shape and smokes cigarettes
He's injecting testosterone. End of discussion.
Isn't TRT standard treatment for older men? It certainly is in the uk.
and drinking methyl blue...
Poe's law in action.
This is the guy famous for having and being proud of his brain worm.
Yeah but I’ve seen a documentary, Futurama I think it was called, that showed the cognitive benefits of having worms.
That’s what he’s famous for, huh? Nobody knew who he was until he burst onto the national stage because of his brain worm. And please show a source that he was “proud” of the affliction.
Well, it's... what we've been told to do (at least in the rest of the world) for more than a century? Packaged as some "app-like" / "tech-like" website?
Pathetic
If the old wisdom is correct then there is no issue in regurgitating it in a format suitable for a modern audience. We departed from it for a very long time, especially in regards to fat and processed foods. America has been been on a sharp decline in diet-related health.
The deeper problem is that you can feed a family with a few bucks at a fast food joint. Eating correctly costs money, money that Americans don't have.
> deeper problem is that you can feed a family with a few bucks at a fast food joint. Eating correctly costs money, money that Americans don't have
A fast-food meal is an expensive meal by global standards. The problem is partly cost. And party education and time. But it’s almost certainly not income.
> The deeper problem is that you can feed a family with a few bucks at a fast food joint. Eating correctly costs money, money that Americans don't have.
No you can't, in reality. It only seems so because the fast-food industry is heavily subsidized by taxpayer dollars.
Organic food would be much more affordable otherwise
I don't think there was guidance to avoid ultra processed foods 100 years ago anywhere in the world. I don't believe that concept even existed, let alone was promulgated by health authorities. But I'd lkvd to be proven wrong.
Well it wasn't there because there was no processed food.. but still the guidance everywhere on earth (except USA) is to eat fresh, non-processed food
The problem is the massive emphasis on eating as a part of health. As if eating right is the only thing you need to do to avoid all disease. That putting other substances (e.g. vaccines) in your body will make you unhealthy.
I do not think there is room for anti-vaxxers on this site.
Evidence please.
Evidence of what exactly? That RFK Jr. focuses on healthy eating while vilifying vaccines and other established health practices?
"That putting other substances (e.g. vaccines) in your body will make you unhealthy."
This, obviously.
Maybe there’s a miscommunication. I don’t believe that statement. It’s something that RFK Jr believes.
My mistake, apologies
The man is stark raving bonkers mad in that head-in-the-sand, if-I-ignore-science-then-it-can't-hurt-me way but (and OMG I think I'm going to throw up a little in my mouth even coming close to agreeing with anything that come out of his mouth) isn't that basically what we've been doing with dietary guidelines since the 80s?
Like, don't get me wrong, RFK will kill N*10^5, N*10^6 people with his outlook on diseases, but....how many people have had their lives wrecked by "fat makes you fat", "ketchup is a vegetable", and "eat a balanced diet composed entirely of sausage, flour, and sugar"? As a GenXer I've been dealing with the echoes of this for a long time.
"Isn't that basically what we've been doing with dietary guidelines since the 80s?"
If by this you mean to ask if the new guidelines are the same as previous ones from the 80s, then no. The new pyramid is different, makes different recommendations (more meat, for instance, and less wheat and grains). The website linked to explicitly shows how it is different from the previous "food pyramid" guidelines.
No, what I meant was "haven't we been basically ignoring science on nutrition since the 80s?" I think we have.
For those who don't believe me - go find some old family photos of your parents or grandparents, whichever generation would have been young adults in the 1960s or 1970s. Compare them to people of the same age born any time after, say, 1990. Nothing come of one sample, but people from the previous generation just weren't fat in their 20s like we are.
Yes, there's more to it than that. But food is a big part of it.
You went on a bit of a rant there - lol. I like the new guidelines they explicitly disavow processed food. As for vaccines, not everyone complaining about specific vaccines is anti vax. A lot of vaccines are also region specific. Eg HK does TB vax for kids because Nannie’s from Indonesia carry TB. No one does the TB vax in the US.
A lot of vaccines are tailored towards the mother going back to work. They could be tailored for a later schedule if there is concern about secondary effects like autism and the child is being cared for at home.
Again I’m not anti vax but I also don’t think the protocol designers are providing alternative options which they should.
> if there is concern about secondary effects like autism
It would sound more scientific and less anti-vaxxer if you said “concern about secondary effects like astrological contamination”
My kids are all vaccinated according to schedule. Calling me an anti vaxxer is cheap trolling.
And yes - if kids have had serious impacts to vaccines parents should be told and providers should encourage reporting into vaers
I put autism there because it’s the most commonly used anecdote when discussing this. I’m not saying take the vax away. Eg if mmrv is the big bad vax for autism - change its schedule to be given after 2 yrs after autism tests.
Talking about "concern for secondary effects like autism" legitimizes the theory, whether you wanted to or not; that's why the person you responded to got annoyed.
It does not. And downvoting for being annoyed seems like a low bar. But people are just fucking hard to have a conversation these days.
On second thoughts I should have said “concern for alleged secondary effects”.
I didn’t call you an anti-vaxxer and saying so is cheap trolling.
How dare you insult my diet of 7 Sausage McGriddles per day!
> I'm going to throw up a little in my mouth even coming close to agreeing with anything that come out of his mouth
The American cult of personality is ridiculous. The only winning move is not to play.
What lunacy?
Listening to him talk about the Spanish Flu, and clearly not understand why secondary bacterial infections killed more people than the flu itself, was my personal point of "wow, this guy is an idiot".
In his book "The Real Anthony Fauci" he spends a whole chapter claiming that HIV does not cause AIDS and it was actually caused by recreational drug use.
AI generated health report citing hallucinated research and incorrectly representing real research.
He believes germ theory is a creation of Big Pharma to push "patented pills, powders, pricks, potions, and poisons and the powerful professions of virology and vaccinology"
He believes in the miasma theory and just maintaining a healthy immune is enough to keep you from getting sick.
Just read his book, "The Real Anthony Fauci" and you'll realize that this man shouldn't be trusted to run a kindergarten nurses office.
We don’t need good vaccines anymore even though infectious diseases are on the rise. Other global medical experts seem to be going against many of his plans.
Kennedy has never said anything like that
"There’s no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective."
https://www.factcheck.org/2023/11/scicheck-rfk-jr-incorrectl...
Some direct, in-context quotes:
> There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective. [interviewer pushes back, brings up polio vaccine] So if you say to me, “The polio vaccine, was it effective against polio?” I’m going to say, “Yes.” And if say to me, “Did it cause more death than avert?” I would say, “I don’t know, because we don’t have the data on that.”
> The most popular vaccine in the world is the DTP vaccine. [...] That vaccine caused so many injuries that Wyeth, which was the manufacturer, said to the Reagan administration, “We are now paying $20 in downstream liabilities for every dollar that we’re making in profits, and we are getting out of the business unless you give us permanent immunity from liability.” And by the way, Reagan said at that time, “Why don’t you just make the vaccine safe?” And why is that? Because vaccines are inherently unsafe. They said, “Unavoidably unsafe, you cannot make them safe.”
Not going quote the whole thing because it's long, but he repeatedly drives home his point that all vaccines are inherently unsafe, and the injuries and deaths they cause always outweigh their effectiveness against disease.
- https://lexfridman.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr-transcript/
> I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby and I say to him, ‘Better not get him vaccinated.’ And he heard that from me. If he hears it from 10 other people, maybe he won’t do it, you know, maybe he will save that child.
> If you’re one of 10 people that goes up to a guy, a man or a woman, who’s carrying a baby, and says, ‘Don’t vaccinate that baby,’ when they hear that from 10 people, it’ll make an impression on ‘em, you know. And we all kept our mouth shut. Don’t keep your mouth shut anymore. Confront everybody on it.
- https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/the-way-forward/hffh-th... timestamp 11:54, 13:30
This one is interesting because the interviewer prompts him with something like "we aren't anti-vaccine, we just want to make sure they're safe" and he does not agree, he repeatedly says, with no qualification, "tell everyone not to vaccinate their children".
I don't believe he has ever voluntarily made a positive public comment about any vaccine. He did during his confirmation hearing, but he was obviously heavily incentivized to do so. During that hearing he did not say his opinion had changed, he simply lied about all past comments and claimed they never happened.
> We don’t need good vaccines anymore even though infectious diseases are on the rise
To clarify, this is an example of RFK's lunacy, not the user's opinion to be voted on.
The end result of his vax push has been to reduce the set of government required vaccines down to the same set used by Europe already. Additional vaccination is still available should an individual elect.
Are you of the opinion that the European recommendation is insufficient? Would you petition European healthcare industry that they are requiring too few vaccines? If so, I would expect Europeans to be chronically far more diseased than Americans, do we see that in the data?
I haven't particularly kept up with RFKs brand of MAGA craziness, but all European countries have different childhood vaccination schedules, with some overlap, see here: https://vaccination-info.europa.eu/en/about-vaccines/when-va...
The superset of all Euro vaccines is still much smaller than what the US had. Are we that much healthier?
What is on the US schedule that is not on Euro schedule?
Here's the US vaccine schedule pre-RFK: https://archive.cdc.gov/#/details?q=schedule&start=0&rows=10...
Here's a site where you can view vaccine schedules across Europe: https://vaccine-schedule.ecdc.europa.eu/
The only outlier is Hepatitis A, which is still recommended in some European countries. On the reverse side, the meningococcal vaccine is commonly scheduled in Europe but not in the US.
Once those additional vaccines are off the "routine" schedule, they'll be pulled by the suppliers, because it eliminates exemption from lawsuits. If you "choose" a non-routine vaccination, people can then sue pharma for ANY harm, and you can be sure there'll be a bunch of crackpot right-wingers trying to prove each one is "bad" and they'll disappear sooner or later. RFK's fans (Del Bigtree) have admitted that this is their plan. And if they're NOT routine, they'll probably not be covered by insurance, so you'll have to pay hundreds or thousands to get one. I would still do that, but not many others will.
Electing to get all ZERO optional vaccines actually available to you because of "reasons" isn't much of a choice.
"Once those additional vaccines are off the "routine" schedule, they'll be pulled by the suppliers, because it eliminates exemption from lawsuits"
Why is this bad? From one of the threads - "There IS scrutiny on vaccines, by the scientific and medical community - your "scrutiny" (as presumably neither a PhD in a relevant field or MD) is not valuable or relevant. There is decades of research that says that currently recommended vaccines are safe and effective."
OK, then there won't be grounds for lawsuits or lawsuits will be easily dismissed.
"you can be sure there'll be a bunch of crackpot right-wingers trying to prove each one is "bad" and they'll disappear sooner or later" - This logic can be applied to literally any product, be it a medicine, a vaccine, or any consumer good. Somehow pharma companies are able to sell any other drug without going into bankruptcy.
Cerebral palsy, a naturally occuring disorder, generates $10M in "malpractice" payouts, part of why giving birth in USA is so expensive.
They are based on denmark's guidelines, which as you know is a very cold country.
One of the vaccines made strictly optional was for dengue, which is not really a thing in denmark since I think they don't have that many mosquitos due to weather.
However, in the US, mosquitos and tropical weather are common for a large part of the population.
Point being, a huge country with a huge variety of climates and diseases shouldn't follow the lead of a small country with a fairly homogenous weather and disease pattern.
Are you familiar with any European country that does schedule a dengue vaccine? It is not listed here: https://vaccine-schedule.ecdc.europa.eu/
The argument I've seen is that because the US has worse medical care in general, it makes sense to get more vaccinations.
It's true - none of his conspiracy theories involve the moon directly.
Antivax, avocated against pasteurization, thinks fries are healthy when fried in beef tallow, swam in sewers with his grandkids to prove the human body is naturally immune to diseases and vaccines are unnecessary, tried to ban paracetamol based on bad research linking it to autism, and much more if you care to dig a little.
He's never been anti-vax, though he has advocated for better data about vaccines with good reason--it's abominable. He's advocated against requiring milk to be pasteurized. One of the few reasonable datasets suggesting it doesn't help is the amish. The other ones sound weird so I will indeed dig a little.
> One of the few reasonable datasets suggesting it doesn't help is the amish
When you literally live on the farm where the cow is milked, there is less benefit to pasteurization, yes. Unless you want us to live like the Amish, then let's keep our pasteurized milk, OK?
Some of us do want to live near where our food comes from and eat it fresh. I haven't seen anyone advocating that pasteurization should be banned, just that raw milk should be un-banned.
Should we be forced to drink pasteurized milk?
You were never forced to, don't change the subject. Issue is with the secretary of health spreading obvious lies about pasteurization, a process that saved countless lives over the course of more than a century.
While he moderates his take on it depending on who his audience is, he has said "There's no vaccine that is safe and effective."
https://apnews.com/article/rfk-kennedy-election-2024-preside...
Show us all how all the data on vaccines is "abominable".
Don't you remember how everyone who got a covid vaccine died off two years later?
Acetaminophen, honestly, shouldn't be recommended so frequently, especially for kids, and if he's against it, I view that as a big point in his favor. The distance between the therapeutic and liver toxic doses is too small for kids, less than 2.5x the max recommended dose, and it's based on kid's weight, so very young kids can't really be given the amount shown on the box. For example, a hepatotoxic dose for my 5 year old based on their weight is just 3/4 of the adult daily max recommended dose. That's a pointy-ass UX failure.
Growing up, my mom, a pediatrician, never let tylenol in the house because she saw too many kids come through the pediatric ER with liver failure because of it in her hospital shifts. It's the leading cause of acute liver toxicity in the US.
> The distance between the therapeutic and liver toxic doses is too small for kids, less than 2.5x the max recommended dose
If you’re giving your kid 2.5x the listed maximum dose of a medication, that’s on you.
> a hepatotoxic dose for my 5 year old based on their weight is just 3/4 of the adult daily max recommended dose
Sure, and even a small drink of alcohol can poison a kid. Something being OK for adults doesn’t make it OK for kids. Read the packaging.
It causes >100k cases of poisoning in the US every year. RTFM isn't working.
Anti-vaccine, anti-tylenol, stating that circumcision causes autism, stating wireless 5G damages DNA, stating that vaccines are part of a anti-black conspiracy, hiv/aids denialism, believing that contrails are actually chemtrails, etc etc etc.
Link to chemtrails comments: https://gizmodo.com/rfk-jr-goes-full-tinfoil-pledges-to-stop...
Link to autism comments: https://www.cato.org/blog/circumcision-tylenol-autism-rfk-jr...
Misc including 5g comments: https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2024/11/15/rfk-jrs-con...
The Cato.org one is interesting because it only speculates what might have influenced him, then attempts to debunk those sources.
Obviously I feel like he should be providing his sources.
I chose that source intentionally to underscore that nobody on any part of the political spectrum is actually contesting he said or believes these things. Regardless of how they choose to view them.
Can you link to your strongest source for one of those claims?
https://www.factcheck.org/2025/10/rfk-jr-s-inaccurate-claims...
Staunch anti-vaccine, and he's tearing apart the CDC wit regards to the same.
I wonder how affordable or accessible is it in US to follow this effectively.
I know it’s important to have an informative guideline, but isn’t it strangely reminiscent of “just say no”?
A stopped clock is right twice a day. These recommendations come from a corrupted source and therefore have no value.
...but you just made the argument that corrupted sources can be, on occasion, correct.
There's no contradiction there. A stopped clock is sometimes right and has no information value.
If a particular clock was never right, that would actually give it positive information value, because it would at least tell you one time it isn't.
One of the big design flaws of the engima machine was that no plaintext letter ever encrypted to the same letter.
This... is so silly.
Unfortunately there seems to be no good aligned definition of what (highly) processed food is. 1,2
Whole grain bread or infant formula can be “highly processed” despite very healthy.
In the end someone else cooks for you and packages it. They can cook healthy or not or in between, add a lot of salt or little, .. as always it’s more complex.
1: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41430-022-01099-1
2 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/nutrition-research-r...
People who complain about “processed foods” generally have a basic misunderstanding of chemical/biochemical processes and energy gradients or activation energies.
Ultimately, everything is highly processed or we’d be eating rocks. The magnificent manufacturing line in animal or even plant cells is one of the most processed things at the finest molecular level that we know!
That's not really what we're talking about here though. An apple isn't the same as an apple juice which isn't the same as an apple flavored candy, even you can appreciate the difference of processing in these simple examples.
A slab of beef isn't the same as a "burger patty*" where the meat is coming from 54 different pigs, including cartilages, tendons, skin &co and contains 12 additives coming from the petrochemical industry.
The same applies to vegetarians/vegan stuff, you can make a patty from beans at home with like 3 ingredients, or buy ready made patties containing hydrogenated trans fats, bad additives, food coloring, &c.
Is there anything really wrong with cartilage, skin, tendons etc? Is that actually unhealthy or is that squeamishness? Also is there anything wrong with it coming from multiple animals? I.e. homogenisation of the product.
Doesnt really matter to his point. It could be the healthiest thing the world but still more processed than a whole steak. Remember, he's arguing against the claim that everything is processed to the point where distinguishing between degree doesnt matter. Not that tendon/cartilage are necessarily bad.
Yes I understand bioavailability etc. My point is that it’s nothing to do with how processed something is.
He never mentions bioavailability. It seems you are projecting some conflation of bioavailability/processed which he's not doing.
In what sense is an ear of corn highly processed? Is the same sense in which a hot dog is highly processed?
And yet we find that the foods that most people can intuitively label as "processed" come with lower satiety per calorie, unfavorable effects on blood sugar, and lower micro nutrient density per calorie. There are definitely outliers, but obvious ones are Wonderbread vs Whole grain high fiber breads (like Daves 21 grain or ezekiel bread), American cheese vs Sliced medium cheddar, even things like Sweetened apple sauce vs an Apple, White rice versus brown or "wild rice"
> In the end someone else cooks for you and packages it.
I think someone else cooking for you isn't the problem, the problem is at "packages it". Because, when you cook something at home, it's good for a few days to a week -- but food processors effectively always need various additives to keep the food shelf-stable for long enough for it to go factory -> warehouse -> store -> your house -> your meal. There are definitely exceptions (eg raisins are dried grapes, end of story) but generally this is the problem.
> Whole grain bread... very healthy.
Are you sure? Ever noticed how when you bake bread at home, it's basically 4 days on the counter before it's inedible, right? Yet commercial bread lasts for weeks.. ever wondered why that is?
As for processed food in general, I could be wrong, but my mental exercise goes along the lines of "would my great-grandma know what this is?" Eggs, butter, milk, fruits, vegetables, flour, rice, meat, fish, etc etc. But if it has an ingredients list and a nutrition label.. probably best to avoid making it a staple of your diet. Yes, I get it, cooking is a pain in the ass and everyone hates "the dinner problem", but IMO it's worth it for your health.
4 days... we bake bread from different grains: it's barely edible after 24 hours. But that is how we do it: bake a loaf early morning, eat what we need, give the rest to the animals. Just like my grandparents did.
I don't get the cooking pain or dinner problem anyway nor do I know anyone irl who has that luckily. I hear it online sometimes and then I check their profile and it becomes clear why.
> I don't get the cooking pain or dinner problem
Wait, do you really not understand why people have issues cooking healthy stuff for dinner? I don't think the average person can bake a loaf of bread every morning, or cook a meal for a family of four every day.
Personally I tend to batch cook for my wife and me, but my daughter's almost gonna start needing to eat solids soon, so we'll have to cook for her as well. My mom also brings us a lot of food but not every family is fortunate like that.
Meals are simple — a protein (usually meat, but sometimes beans or lentils), a carb (rice or pasta, usually rice) and veggies (frozen). Make a lot and freeze it. I can't imagine cooking real meals for 3 people every day with our work schedules.
But not having time every day is not the same as just not cook right? I cook batches since uni from fresh ingredients and freeze it; thats 30 years ago and I still do. We always have so much choise just from that while it takes cooking 1 day a week but 10 liter pots of curries etc. Now I have more time and can do more cooking so thats a luxury. I get why people cannot do that, I guess GP their comment, to me, seemed more like a burden than just no time and I find that a difference. Many take the time to spend hours in the gym just to throw crap into themselves the rest of the time.
But yes, we do the same as you generally and we can always eat well. Getting up at 5 to bake bread and make new dough for the next day is not actually eating into anything for me and I enjoy the work and the smells. It is a luxury I know that and I could not do that when in uni but most other cooking I could and did.
There's bread making techniques that allow you to make bread multiple times a week relatively easily and quickly, even without kneading.
Cold fermentation allows you the bread to rise overnight, so you can take 20 min to make the dough the night before, and then let it ferment overnight. Then the next day shape it, wait for it to proof and bake it.
Some breads also can last days, even up to weeks, even for homebaked breads without any additives.
Like for example, there's recipes where you make the dough the night before, put it in the oven after you wake up, and it's ready by the time you go to work.
Chainbaker on youtube has lots of guides for all kinds of breads.
Kennedy is targeting baby formula.
> Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has directed the Food and Drug Administration to review the nutrients and other ingredients in infant formula, which fills the bottles of millions of American babies. The effort, dubbed “Operation Stork Speed,“ is the first deep look at the ingredients since 1998.
> “The FDA will use all resources and authorities at its disposal to make sure infant formula products are safe and wholesome for the families and children who rely on them,” Kennedy said.
https://news.wttw.com/2025/06/03/kennedy-has-ordered-review-...
I once looked at the ingredients of the baby formula product and was shocked to see some of them list high fructose corn syrup as the first ingredient. It seems like being forced to spending the first year of your life primarily feeding on industrially refined sugars is worth investigating as a cause of metabolic ills developed later in life.
I think "highly processed foods are bad" is best seen as a general rule and no more than that. However, it is a good general rule and following it is probably the easiest way for people to eat healthy.
In general, the more processing steps involved, the more things companies can do to make the food more delicious, cheaper to produce, etc., at the expense of customers' health. There is also a significant correlation between "highly processed food" and "contains way too much refined grains and oil".
However, it's absolutely possible to process the food heavily and add lots of ingredients and still maintain a healthy food if you actually care about the customer's wellbeing. It would just result in a product that is less competitive in the short term, so companies have little to no incentive to do it.
what gave you the idea that infant formula is "very healthy". definitely not the case for 99% of infant formula in the USA, it's full of canola oil and crap
I doubt the issue is with processed food. Basically everything we eat is processed (even fruit and veg is selectively bred and has been for decades if not centuries). Bread and pasta is fine.
Ultra-processed is where all of our issues are coming from. If you can't identify ingredients in something, or you see e-numbers, emulsifiers and such, it's UPF. Essentially any fast food, branded items, ready meals or heavily plastic wrapped long-shelf life stuff.
Cognitive decline and overweight conditions have risen in line with the uptake of UPF. A 10% increase in UPF leads to 25% increase in the chance of dementia. UPF lead to overeating, and the way they are processed causes them to cause insulin spikes in the body which lead to inflammation, including in the brain.
They can also be a machine that might add a non-negligible amount of mineral oils and possibly other stuff to your food. The guideline to use should be that the ingredient list should be as short as possible. If it has more than 5 ingredients, that's already incredibly suspicious in my opinion. The problem is that some stuff (like a mineral oil contamination) doesn't even have to be declared on the ingredient list.
For example, normal simple bread should only have 4 or maybe 5 ingredients.
This is my personal approach too. I stock things with fewest number of ingredients. Example that comes to mind: RXBar might be UPF but there’s not much in it. Compared to your average name brand protein bar or granola bar.
My personal definition: If it was impossible for ancient Romans to make this food, it's highly processed. I think this is a pretty good heuristic.
besides being loud in the media and policy, does it matter?
to keep this focused on hacker news. this is like asking the programming community to solve "some intractable social problem," and then sometimes you get an answer, "well, what we need is, a new kind of open source license."
disputes over guidelines and the meaning of highly processed, outside the academic humanities context, is kind of pointless right? if you are talking about cultural influence - you can't coerce people to eat (or not eat) something in this country, so cultural influence is the main lever government can pull regarding food - the answer to everything is, "What does Ja Rule think?" (https://www.okayplayer.com/dave-chappelles-ja-rule-joke-is-h...) that is, what do celebrities say and do? And that's why we're at where we are at, the celebrities are now "running" the HHS.
There's a definition for highly processed food, it's whatever Ja Rule says it is. Are you getting it?
>Whole grain bread or infant formula are “highly processed” despite very healthy.
"processed" and "healthy" are oxymorons.
I think it's better to tell people to restrict themselves to "whole foods".
Processed and healthy are not oxymorons.
For one, most all preservation methods are processing, including canning, freezing and drying. You can't possibly claim that frozen or canned veggies are unhealthy
really non-scientifically speaking, the kind of "processed" that seems to be less healthy comes closer to "pre-chewed/digested" and "concentrated" (ground very fine, broken down into constituent parts. Eg: refined flours over whole grains. corn syrup over corn on the cob (or even just frozen whole corn), Fruit juice over sliced fresh/frozen fruit.
A big challenge is how do you make rules/terms for that uneducated (on the topic) folks, disinterested folks, and lower IQ folks (MeanIQ - 1SD) can readily understand and apply in their busy + stressful lives?
Sure, and, more processed is almost always less healthy than less processed. Doesn't mean "bad for me" just "not quite as good for me"
Did you find evidence for your two claims?
You can compose a pretty healthy diet from what’s called “processed” (prepared, cooked and packaged). From the very same pyramid.
Yes please.
For example, eating a fruit is very different from drinking fruit juice. And the process of "juicification" destroys fibre. [1]
And this is just mild processing.
It gets worse for other processed foods that have preservatives etc.
Infant formula is just a scam. Nothing beats breast milk when it comes to feeding babies.
Infant formula puts you at risk of corporate scams — https://x.com/i/status/2009105279414141380
[1]: https://www.stanfordchildrens.org/en/topic/default%3Fid%3Dfr...
I believe you’re missing their point. As well as demonstrating a complete lack of information about infant formula.
To me it seems the point is “processed” == bad. Isn’t it? And NOVA seems to be the gold standard for what’s “processed”.
Of course there’s better things as whole grain bread in plastic foil (whole grain bread freshly made) or infant formula (breastfeeding). But they are more healthy than other things that rank better in NOVA.
How is it possible that beef, dairy, and chicken are front and center while Lentils, Tofu (or even just soy), Chickpeas, Nutritional Yeast, Broccoli, etc are all left off? Why do they arbitrarily split "protein" and "fruit/veg" given that most/all of the most protein dense foods are vegetables/legumes? Steak is a terrible source of protein (in terms of nutrient density). Immediately pretty suspicious.
There are nuts and legumes there in the bottom left.
So funny to see people reflexively defend those things being left off because it confirms their own beliefs. A deeper inspection of the actual guidelines has them being very fair to plant proteins:
> Consume a variety of protein foods from animal sources, including eggs, poultry, seafood, and red meat, as well as a variety of plant-sourced protein foods, including beans, peas, lentils, legumes, nuts, seeds, and soy.
The thing is... the pyramid is just a graphic, the actual words give more context.
https://cdn.realfood.gov/DGA.pdf
It's not just a personal belief that plant sources are, on the whole, better from a health perspective.
Since we're talking about the actual wording of the report, it admitted the significance of previous reports deciding to order plant foods before animal products. That is reversed in this most recent report, and very intentionally, which they make clear. They also pretend that the health effects of saturated fat intake are still fuzzy, as if the evidence doesn't heavily point towards it being detrimental.
If anyone is holding to unshakeable beliefs and unwilling to consider evidence, it's the shoddy scientists (many with meat-industry related conflicting interests) that wrote the report.
Focus on what he is saying.
The original commenter is simply misinformed about them excluding plant based protein. That is what his comment was shows.
Kinda of wild that Dairy got its own section in that document as a proscribed thing to eat.
There are plenty of lactose intolerant people. These people can meet their nutritional needs without dairy. (For Calcium: via Sardines, leafy greens, Tofu, etc.)
There's a giant head of broccoli at the very top of the new pyramid? They emphasize protein AND fresh produce.
I guess what I'm lamenting is the missed opportunity to highlight that many vegetables e.g. broccoli are an excellent protein source as well as other important nutrients. It gives you additional flexibility when meal planning. There's a common misconception (at least in my circles) that protein => animal protein which isn't always useful for planning a balanced meal.
Broccoli has 2.8g of protein per 100g. Beef has 26g per 100g, and chicken has 27g. If you're trying to get protein, broccoli isn't going to do much, and I think it's good that the government is being honest about that. A chart that listed broccoli as a major source of protein would be misleading. Broccoli is a good source of many nutrients, and the chart calls it out as such, but it is not an effective source of protein.
If you compare protein per kJ instead, broccoli has 0.021g protein per kJ whereas lean beef mince has 0.028g per kJ. Much more similar. Although of course you would need food that is higher density protein as well so you don't have too much volume to eat.
But that is a kind of silly way to compare. Broccoli isn't very filling _and_ it doesn't have very much protein in it. That doesn't change the fact that it lack protein.
The question is if I'm preparing a meal that I want to be filling, healthy, and energizing, how should I do it. Broccoli isn't a good answer to the protein part of that question.
Protein may be associated with satiety, but so is fibre, of which beef has none.
Have fun eating 2kg of broccoli to get 50g of protein.
Normalising by mass is a poor way to assess food's protein content since different foods have greatly different water contents. E.g. beef jerky has much higher protein per 100g than beef largely because it's dried (admittedly, probably also because they use leaner cuts)
Good luck getting Americans eat sufficient broccoli to source their protein without also adding a ton of cheese or fat/sugar based sauces.
> I guess what I'm lamenting is the missed opportunity to highlight that many vegetables e.g. broccoli are an excellent protein source as well as other important nutrients
I can see why you would expect something like that from this administration, but surprisingly the linked webpage seems to be based in fact.
Broccoli are not an excellent protein source from a dietary perspective.
I like broccoli, but you’d have to eat around six pounds of broccoli to cover the recommended daily intake of essential amino acids.
It’s harder to get the target 1-1.6g protein per kg from vegetables, unless you’re consuming beans/pulses which are also high in carbohydrates. Broccoli is not a great protein source, an entire head will give you 10g at most – the average adult would have to eat a dozen+ per day.
Beans and pulses are mostly long chain carbohydrates, which are not a problem.
Most protein rich vegetables are legumes and beyond this are also rich in complex carbs. Legumes are in the top 10 food allergies. Not to mention the amino profile of vegetable sources isn't very good.
those are terrible sources of protein.
You have to consume a very large amount of lentils to make up a healthy amount of protein per day. It’s something like 6 cans of chickpeas vs two chicken breasts per day. I believe you also don’t get a complete amino acids panel like you would with meat which is complete on its own.
Indeed, chickpeas don't supply sufficient essential amino acids[1]. But sesame is[2] and goes well with chickpea! See falafel or hummus.
[1]: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007114512000797
[2]: https://doi.org/10.3390/nu14194079
> I believe you also don’t get a complete amino acids panel like you would with meat which is complete on its own.
You can challenge beliefs and do a modicum of research, which would easily disprove this false and frankly ridiculous notion, which defies even a rudimentary understanding of plant biology.
I mean I have. There are almost no vegetables that are considered amino acid complete though there are (well known) combinations like legumes (beans/lentils) + rice. But this goes back to my original point of needing a lot of beans to get your protein requirement for the day. In places like India where there are a lot of vegetarians, diary products are heavily used to make up the deficit.
> There are almost no vegetables that are considered amino acid complete
This is just blatantly and hilariously false.
They are literally called "essential amino acids".
A plant would not survive if it lacked amino acids which are essential.
It it shocking anyone would deny this obvious and extremely basic fact about biology.
you need to educate yourself better about "basic facts about biology"
they're called essential because humans cannot produce them internally, so we have to consume them (though you could in principle make the same assessment for other animal species, but that's less relevant, unless you're, I don't know, raising cows?)
plants don't eat, but produce organic molecules from raw ingredients (or almost raw, in case of nitrogen), and can produce all amino acids - but in different quantities, so maybe the (parts of) plants you eat don't have all the necessary amino acids.
Now they do produce all the essential amino acids, but in insufficient amounts? Weird how the narrative keeps changing in this thread. A serious lack of scientific knowledge is apparent from people who insist on eating animals. And as always, it is devoid of any backing evidence or credibility other than "trust me, bro, I lift".
From your tone and the fact that you're quoting things nobody in this thread has said, I'm not sure that you are actually interested in hearing any scientific argument. You certainly aren't trying to make one. But I'll try:
The quality of a protein is measured using PDCAAS (Protein digestibility corrected amino acid score). It's a score between 0 and 1 that measures the quality of a protein as a function of digestibility and how well it meets the human amino acid requirements.
It is indeed correct that both lentils and chickpeas (which the original comment you replied to was talking about) have a much lower PDCAAS value of around 0.70. Data on beef varies, but it is generally considered to be a complete protein with a PDCAAS score above 0.90.
Instead of accusing "people who insist on eating animals" of lacking scientific knowledge, it would have been much more helpful to point out that the highest quality proteins on the PDCAAS scale are almost universally vegetarian or vegan: eggs, milk, soy, and mycoprotein all have higher scores than beef, chicken, or pork.
I believe the person you’re responding to is a vegan (from other comments) so the “amino complete” alternative of eggs and dairy you’re suggesting don’t fit the bill of requirements for his arguments either which leaves soy. Mycoprotein has plenty of controversy around it regarding heavy metals and health issues from the fact that it’s highly processed. Soy has a lot of phytoestrogens so it’s not a great candidate to consume large amounts of.
Beef has ~3x more protein per gram than legumes. It is much more protein-dense than vegetables or legumes.
Similarly, it's a "complete" protein, whereas most vegetables and legumes are missing necessary amino acids.
The downside of beef isn't the "density" of nutrients: the downside is high saturated fat. Chicken breast, though, is similarly high in protein without the saturated fat downside.
> most vegetables and legumes are missing necessary amino acids
In practice, there's no evidence of amino acid deficiency in vegans/vegetarians except ones that restrict even further (potato diet, fruitarians, etc) https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6893534/
Besides the ever-popular soybean being a complete protein, if you have normal variety in your diet, it's just not something you have to worry about.
>In practice, there's no evidence of amino acid deficiency in vegans/vegetarians
That is not what your linked article says. It says there is not evidence of protein deficiency, and the deficiency of amino acids is overstated. Not that there is no deficiency.
And vegan/vegetarian health is really a 2nd order variable here. Vegans and vegetarians could have massive amino acid surpluses and it remains a fact that vegetable proteins lack useful amino acids that meat has. Maybe the vegetarians are eating lots of eggs. Maybe they are taking lots of supplements. Maybe they are actually eating meat despite calling themselves vegans and vegetarians. It doesn't matter. There really is no disputing the fact about the composition of meat/vegetable protein.
> a fact that vegetable proteins lack useful amino acids that meat has.
This isn't a problem since you only need nine essential amino acids and they are present in adequate quantity in various vegetables and shrooms. The others are synthesized by ones body.
Only if those vegetables or shrooms were grown in natural sunlight (no greenhouse plastic/glass involved) and in a soil with abundant minerals, macronutrients, and high brix value.
> Beef has ~3x more protein per gram than legumes
Missing amino acids isn't a problem IRL as people tends to eat different stuff.Eating only one type of food is not good for your health, whether it is a plant or animal product.
The fat is an excellent source of energy though and it's very hard to get fat by eating fat because it's essentially hormonally inert. I.e. eating fat doesn't precipitate insulin which is the hormone that enables body fat accumulation.
So the problem with steak isn't the steak itself it's the "steak dinner" where the meat comes with sides such as french fries and drinks such as beer.
> The downside of beef isn't the "density" of nutrients: the downside is high saturated fat.
There are other downsides to beef .. such as the batshit crazy use of ecosystems and resources required to produce it at industrial scale.
Got a (beef) cow roaming in your yard, somehow getting by on whatever grows out of the ground? Enjoy your steak! Generating 6x the calories via a water-intensive cover crop to feed the cow so you can eat it later? Just say no.
This is orthogonal to nutritious eating habits; I don't think the food pyramid should lie about nutrition due to ecological concerns. (I do think the food pyramid should be a little more concerned about saturated fat than it is, though — which is why I called out chicken as an alternative, and elsewhere also mentioned fish.)
Worth noting that like amino acids there are essential fatty acids as well, and most people have poor nutrition there... red meat isn't "only" saturated fat, but a fairly balanced fatty acid profile. You can have too much, but in moderate cuts it isn't too bad.
I usually suggest around 0.5g fat to 1g protein as a minimal, higher if keto/carnivore.
That's true, although fish has a better balance of essential fatty acids than red meat. Although, oddly enough, wagyu has a (much) better fatty acids profile than other types of beef, so you can justify the occasional wallet splurge on health grounds!
Beef and chicken cause cancer.
Milk can help in regions with dietary low calories, but is mediocre or bad for fat US citizens.
I also found the food shown very misleading.
Beef (red meat) is classified as a probable carcinogen, while chicken (white meat) is safe according to current research.
Beef and chicken does not cause cancer anymore than anything else does. It is an insane take that regular food causes cancer in any level that should be worrisome. Don't cite the studies where they grouped frozen pizza in the same category as beef.
Steak is actually an excellent source of protein (and fat, if you get the fattier steak as you should).
Just because vegetables, lentils or nuts contain protein it doesn't mean it's the same/equivalent to the protein in an animal product.
Meat is actually super easy for humans to digest and it has no downsides to it. All vegetables on the other side contain plenty of anti-nutrients such as folate and oxalates.
Everything in human body, skin, connective tissues, tendons, hair, nails, muscles is essentially built out of protein and collagen. Fats are essential for hormone function.
> Meat is actually super easy for humans to digest and it has no downsides to it.
In moderate amounts, sure. But frequently eating red meat (more than two or three servings a week) is terrible for you. There's "a clear link between high intake of red and processed meats and a higher risk for heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and premature death": https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/whats-the-bee...
Not to mention how high heat cooking of meat, which is common for a steak via frying, brings health risks from Advanced Glycation End products (AGEs).
AGEs are also present in vegetables and legumes, but certain meats like bacon contain unbelievable amounts relative to other foods. (Interestingly: Rice contains almost no AGE's.)
Full guide: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3704564/
Are these the same studies where they grouped frozen pizza with regular beef?
That's exactly what they always are.
"We put a bunch of meat derived products with high amounts of artificial additives together with actual meat and then concluded that meat is the problem"
> Meat is ... has no downsides
Red meat has been linked to cardiovascular disease https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/article/44/28/2626/718873... https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10408398.2021.1... etc
I really take issue with studies like this that put meat and meat products together.
Unprocessed meat is what humans what have been eating for hundreds of thousand of years.
Meat products are commercial new inventions and contain stuff like preservatives, volume expanders, flavor enhancers and coloring agents. They also typically contain added sugars, sodium, malto dextrin, corn syrup.
One can't seriously put these together and call them the same, make a study where participants might be eating SPAM and then conclude that "red meat is bad".
Given the choice between "Domino's vegetarian pizza", "IKEAs meatballs" and "steak that is fried,salted and peppered" which one do you think will be the healthiest option?
>Unprocessed meat is what humans what have been eating for hundreds of thousand of years.
Not in the quantities we eat of unprocessed meat these days.
All of the false statements are loosely based on industry propaganda and are completely disjoined from any modern scientific consensus on nutrition.
It's a good point, and maybe Broccoli isn't then as compelling as something like tofu, which contains nearly as much (and nearly as bio available) protein/calorie as lean steak.
I guess I'd challenge the 'no downsides' claim. Few people stick to super lean grass-fed cuts, and the picture on the site is even a ribeye steak :P
The protein density (g/kcal) of a ribeye steak is basically the same as tofu (I think like 14g/100kcal vs 11g/100kcal in tofu)
I know I'm moving the goal posts slightly (I admit I didn't know about bio availability, and see now that I have more to read up on e.g. Broccoli), but am learning as I discuss rather than arguing a fixed point.
Bioavailabilty is a bit of a non-issue. It's measured as if the food you are measuring is the only food you eat. So if it is slightly low on one amino acid, the "bioavailabilty" drops, but noone eats like that. Once combined with other foods, the total "bioavailabilty" tends to increase.
The bigger problem is nutritional density. I tried meeting the 1-1.5 g/kg protein level through a vegetarian whole grains diet and it's a lot of flipping food. Equivalent of like 3kg of chickpeas a day to make it.
It was definitely eye opening on the sort of ancient benefit of meat. It's really hard to reach your muscular potential without it.
An adult who weighs 75 kg, so is targeting about 75 grams of protein intake per day, would only need to eat 833 grams of cooked chickpeas (which are 9% protein by weight) to get there. That is indeed a lot of chickpeas! But a lot less than you claimed, and you probably shouldn't be getting all your protein from chickpeas anyway.
You're probably talking about dry weight. My can says 6g protein / 130 g. I'm about 100kg and to hit the 1.6 g protein/kg I need 160g of protein. 6g/130g * 3500 g is 161 g of protein.
Two numbers from the USDA:
- Canned, drained and rinsed: 7g protein / 100g [1]
- Boiled: 9g protein / 100g [2]
Not sure what explains the discrepancy (though the second number is much older), but both are considerably higher than what your can says. Sure you aren't reading a per-serving amount?
[1]: https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/food-details/2644288/nutrients
[2]: https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/food-details/173757/nutrients
Nope, here's the can:
https://www.kroger.com/p/kroger-garbanzo-beans/0001111010648
Net weight (3.5 * 130g = 455g) includes the liquid, which you'd normally drain before cooking. The beans themselves are much more nutrient-dense.
> Meat is actually super easy for humans to digest and it has no downsides to it.
The sound you are hearing is vegan heads exploding.
And anyone who knows even basic facts about nutrition.
> How is it possible that beef, dairy, and chicken are front and center while Lentils, Tofu (or even just soy), Chickpeas, Nutritional Yeast, Broccoli, etc are all left off?
To quote famed businessman and philosopher Eugene Krabs: "Money."
Big Broccoli need to step up.
I agree, but sadly it stands no chance against the lobbying powers of industrial pork producers, cattle ranchers or poultry giants like Tyson.
So true thanks for saying this. Seems like a missed opportunity, and definitely suspect of lobbying by the meat industry.
And of course broccoli and legumes doesn't have a lobby group, do they?
Big Broccoli even rolls off the tongue, time to start it!
Can you back up this claim? “ Steak is a terrible source of protein (in terms of nutrient density)”
In terms of value meat is far more important than vegetables unless I am missing something?
Not the poster, but, usually what people are referring to is all the other stuff that comes along.
Per calorie beef and broccoli are actually surprisingly similar, but broccoli comes with fiber, calcium and vitamin C, while beef comes with saturated fat.
Of course, broccoli is not very calorie dense, so you would need to eat a lot.
More realistically, tofu, which has about as much protein per calorie (and almost as much per gram) as middling lean beef. But has half the saturated fat, more iron, more calcium, and fibre.
You just get more good stuff, and less bad stuff with veg.
Cultural reflex probably; lentils and tofu are displeasurable to most Americans
Tofu being displeasurable is funny to me because it literally has no taste and texture by default. It becomes whatever you put it in or how you cook it. You want crunchy? You got it. Puree? Sure. Sweet? Fine. Salty? Spicy? Tangy? Easy.
People just don't want to actually put in the effort to prepare it.
My problem is that I just can't get it to take up any of the flavour. I can marinate it for days, and the marinade will still just be a superficial layer on top of a piece of tofu which, itself, always remains completely unfazed and tasteless.
It's not a problem for saucy dishes like a curry, but even experimenting with friends and borderline "molecular cuisine" techniques I have never once managed to flavour tofu itself :(
I used to be a tofu hater. Once I learned how to actually cook it though, it became one of my favorite protein sources.
> How is it possible that beef, dairy, and chicken are front and center while Lentils, Tofu (or even just soy), Chickpeas, Nutritional Yeast, Broccoli, etc are all left off?
Possibly because those foods are culturally un-American or something silly like that
As a flexitarian, I've had to think quite a lot about how to get enough bioavailable protein while moderating my carb consumption and digestive upset due to beans, and to do so in a sustainable manner factoring in convenience and lack of leisure. I certainly won't recommend anything but lean meat and dairy as protein staples to people who aren't used to watching what they eat.
I also didn't do very well with most beans, but for some reason chickpeas don't bother me, if you haven't tried them.
Yep, I now have a lentil-based staple that also has grams, but that's of course after planning and adaptation.
> Steak is a terrible source of protein (in terms of nutrient density).
At 23g/100g, lean beef has a very high protein/weight ratio. Similar to chicken and turkey breast and exceeded only by canned tuna and processed protein isolates like soy protein isolate, whey protein isolate, and wheat gluten. For comparison, protein content of firm tofu, lentils, and chickpeas is much lower, at 14g/100g, 9g/100g, and 8.5g/100g, respectively. They all contain a lot more carbs per 100g than lean beef.
Further, lean beef contains a full and balanced amino acid profile, which lentils, tofu, chickpeas, soy protein isolate, and wheat gluten does not. It's an excellent food. However there is evidence that charred red meat and red meat containing nitrites is associated with a slight increase in colorectal cancer, so people should be consuming minimally processed red meat where possible, as per the guidance.
And bananas and oatmeal at the bottom.
I guess one way to solve the elderly entitlement crisis is if we all just start dropping dead from heart attacks.
> most/all of the most protein dense foods are vegetables/legumes
Are you abusing "dense" to mean calories over calories, rather than the expected calories over weight measure? Even a cursory search shows the latter to be untrue. The former is disingenuous, because despite "density", people do not eat kilograms of broccoli daily to hit minimum-viable protein targets.
I do regret mentioning Broccoli because it seems to have become a bit of a distraction from my original point, which was that getting enough protein from a varied diet actually isn't that hard once you start to notice how much protein is in certain common veg. I'm not totally sure I understand where the mentality that all your protein has to come from a single source in isolation comes from, but suspect representations like this pyramid are at least partly to blame.
Agree that g/kcal isn't perfect but g/g has its own corner cases like water content skewing things badly (e.g. dried spirulina is 57% protein by weight but you'd never eat more than like a gram in a serving). I never meant to suggest that people should be eating broccoli _in place of_ turkey, only that by _de-emphasising_ the protein content of many vegetables in favor of animal proteins, the graphic encourages meal planning that must always contain an animal protein. More insidiously, in my experience at least, it blurs the line between the nutrition content of different animal proteins ("I have my veg I just need 'a protein' now") which leads to more consumption of red meat regardless of quality.
The graphic that I wish someone would make is the 'periodic table of macro nutrients' that positions foods along multiple dimensions at once but I don't know how you would actually do it in just two dimensions.
Lots of people trying to explain it logically but let's just be honest here, it's because it's made by "real men".
Replying to my own comment because I've had some more time to look through the scientific foundation document. In particular, this was an illuminating section (and maybe hinting at where the 'war on protein' language comes from)
> The DGAs recommend a variety of animal source protein foods (ASPFs) and plant source protein foods (PSPFs) to provide enough total protein to satisfy the minimum requirements set at the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) of 0.8 g/kg body weight for adults and to ensure the dietary patterns meet most nutrient needs [3, 4]. However, over the past 20 years, an extensive body of research has underscored the unique and diverse metabolic roles of protein, and now there is compelling evidence that consuming additional foods that provide protein at quantities above the RDA may be a key dietary strategy to combat obesity in the U.S (while staying within calorie limits by reducing nutrient-poor carbohydrate foods). Instead of incorporating this approach, the past iterations of the DGAs have eroded daily protein quantity by shifting protein recommendations to PSPFs, including beans, peas, and lentils, while reducing and/or de-emphasizing intakes of ASPFs, including meats, poultry, and eggs. The shift towards PSPFs was intended to reduce adiposity and risks of chronic diseases but was primarily informed by epidemiological evidence on The Scientific Foundation for the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025–2030: Appendices | 350 dietary patterns, even in some cases when experimental evidence from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) was available to more specifically inform this recommendation. Another key aspect that DGA committees have inadequately considered are the nutrient consequences when shifting from ASPFs to PSPFs. ASPFs not only provide EAAs, they also provide a substantial amount of highly bioavailable essential micronutrients that are under-consumed. Encouraging Americans to move away from these foods may further compromise the nutrient inadequacies already impacting many in the U.S., especially our young people. Compounding this is the recent evidence highlighting the fallacies of using the unsubstantiated concept of protein ounce equivalents within food pattern (substitution) modeling, leading to recommended reductions in daily protein intakes and protein quality since ASPFs and PSPFs are not equivalent in terms of total protein or EAA density. Given that 1) there is no Tolerable Upper Intake Level (UL) for dietary protein established by the Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) and 2) consuming high quality ASPFs above current recommendations has shown no negative health risks in high quality RCTs, it’s unclear as to why previous DGAs encouraged shifts in protein intake towards limiting high quality, nutrient dense ASPFs. It's essential to evaluate the evidence to establish a healthy range of protein intake and to substantiate whether or not limiting ASPFs is warranted and/or has unintended consequences. An alternative approach that may be more strongly supported by the totality of evidence is the replacement of refined grains with PSPFs like beans, peas, and lentils. Given their nutrient dense profile (e.g., excellent source of fiber, complex carbohydrates, & folate, etc.; good source of protein) nutrient dense PSPFs complement but do not replace the nutrients provided in ASPFs (i.e., excellent source of protein, vit B12, zinc, good source of heme iron, etc.). By including high quality, nutrient dense ASPFs as the primary source of protein, followed by nutrient dense PSPFs as a replacement for nutrient-poor refined grains, a higher-protein, lower-carbohydrate dietary pattern can be achieved which likely improves nutrient adequacy, weight management, and overall health. -- https://cdn.realfood.gov/Scientific%20Report%20Appendices.pd... Appendix 4.9
No vegetable is as protein dense as actual meat in its natural form.
Ruminant meat is absolutely one of the best bioavailable forms of a mostly complete amino acid profile, though eggs and dairy is more complete with differing ratios depending on form/feed.
As to lentils, tofu, chickpeas etc. They're fine for most people in moderation, but they are also relatively inflammatory and plenty of people have digestive issues and allergies to legumes (I do), soy is one of the top 10 allergens that people face. While almost nobody is allergic to ruminant meat.
As you say, in moderation. That also applies to red meat, considering the adverse effects listed on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_meat
AI says legumes are anti-inflammatory.
WHO says meat gives you cancer.
my AI says they aren't
Try Google
I'm pleasantly surprised, this is actually really good. The reason I'm surprised is because of how corrupt the creation of the previous food pyramid was (the sugar industry likely paid to downplay the danger of sugar[1])
I find when it comes to health advice, generally government sources can't be trusted because there's too much special interests and money involved. You really have to do your own research.
[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074...
This is basically the same as the previous version, the "food plate" that Michelle Obama rolled out in 2011:
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/03/business/03plate.html
It's amusing how outraged people were when Michelle Obama did her Let's Move campaign focused on eating healthy and exercise and now people are pretending it's all new.
(There was also a version before that, in 2005. The "MyPyramid." That one emphasized exercise by having a person walking up a revised version of the pyramid. Though it had a whole giant category for "milk," admittedly as a knock against it. I'll grant today's did a good job in de-emphasizing dairy compared to 2005 and 2011.)
The people who got offended at the 2011 campaign are not the same people who are offended at this 2025 campaign. In the united states, if you do anything, someone, somewhere, will be offended. That's kind of our whole shtick.
To be fair, it's everyone's shtick everywhere.
I haven't thought of a word for it yet, but it has something to do with how many people participate in the discourse now. The numbers are large enough that someone somewhere will always have some opinion. Every time.
> It's amusing how outraged people were when Michelle Obama did her Let's Move campaign focused on eating healthy and exercise and now people are pretending it's all new.
It's the same people who got offended because Obama asked for spicy mustard because they thought that was too fancy, but still actively voted for the guy who actively plates everything with gold so as to maximize how tacky everything looks.
They've never been internally consistent and I'm not entirely convinced that they have any principles outside of "own the libs".
It's a nice website, sure.
But what is this administration actually doing to change American diets? It's going to take a little more than throwing up a marketing landing page with a well produced video and nice photos.
This guidance will be taken in by government agencies that set rules, by schools choosing kids lunches , etc .
Not all government action is in the form of a specific law with specific enforcement mechanism.
You need to read the news, man. The landing page is just a press release. This is a summary of government mandated institutional changes to how food is selected and distributed. This will actually change how millions eat. It is good news.
Have you just called a 50 years old food pyramid as previous? This guideline has been released every 5 years.
The biggest issue with sugar is that it makes stuff taste better which leads to overeating. Incidentally it’s also the only downside of glutamate, it just makes stuff taste so good you’ll eat much more than your appetite would guide you to
My personal anecdotal experience is that once you make a conscious effort to avoid added sugars, your taste buds eventually recalibrate over the course of a few months and you end up perceiving stuff with added sugar as way too sweet.
Same with salt.
It‘s not just the better taste that causes the overeating. Sugar and refined carbs cause blood glucose levels to spike, giving you a surge of energy. That spike is very short-lived, resulting in a sharp drop that then causes cravings for more refined carbs/sugar. This blood glucose rollercoaster can cause all kinds of bad effects like mood swings and brain fog. The problem about refined carbs is that they never truly satiate your hunger. Once you add them to a meal, you get into the loop of chasing the glucose high which is horrible for your body and mind.
The other downsides of both sugar and in particular glutamate are that you'll find other foods less sweet or having less depth of flavor (umami), so you'll be more likely to go for the processed options.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/03/opinion/dyor-do-your-own-...
Unfortunately it's pay-walled so I can't read it, I can only react to the headline. But yes, of course with "do your own research" it's "not that simple", but any student of history should know that you should have a very healthy skepticism of any official or mainstream source. For some reason we think in modernity that we've gotten everything right, and it's only in the past that the official explanations were wrong. My money is on the experts being wrong about a lot of things in this era too.
https://archive.is/NhyjE
The good are things we've known for a while. Most of them result in unintended decrease in calories consumed and resulting weight/fat loss.
- More protein (than the prior RDA of 0.39g/lb) can lead to inadvertent caloric restriction and weight loss, and obesity is driving a large number of negative health outcomes. Also improves lean mass (muscle) retention during weight loss.
- Processed foods have lower satiety per calorie, and hence can lead to the same outcomes described above.
- Most people can benefit from eating more fruit and veggies. (Lots of people who change to vegetarian inadvertently eat significantly fewer calories because the food is not calorie dense)
The one glaring part I have a hard time reconciling is:
- This new Real Food guide seems like it's going to increase people's saturated fat intake, which is not good. DASH/Mediterranean diet seems to be a better model than both the prior and new pyramids.
I don't think it's even about low carb vs. high protein to begin with. Many countries and regions in the world are fine with a high-carb diet, and people there live long, healthy lives.
Americans eat so much processed food simply because it is much cheaper than fresh food. Processed food is made to get consumers addicted (through convenience, taste, etc.) and encourage them to consume much more. Fresh food is almost the opposite.
I grew up in a country where freshly made food is actually cheaper than processed food, even to this day. People who stick to a traditional diet are mostly thin, while those who stick to a processed food diet gain a lot of weight.
> Americans eat so much processed food simply because it is much cheaper than fresh food.
I don't understand how people come to this conclusion
Beans/grains/legumes are cheap
Frozen veg is dirt cheap (and retains its nutrition as good as, or better than fresh). In-season fruit and veg
Which foods are more expensive?
People are door-dashing their salaries away and complaining about the price of fresh food...
Convenience and addiction makes more sense, certainly not price
Yes, but look at the comments. Americans are obsessed with meat. They actively believe that mostly meat diets are somehow much more healthy than mostly carb and vegetable diets.
None of them want to eat only grains and vegetables, and meat is both the most expensive food and also the most damaging to the environment, which I guess is a second thing Americans seem not to care about.
Something like 15% of the Americans I know are vegetarian or vegan. Though you've characterized the others well.
I think we need more education around glycemic index. Protein and fats burn slowly enough that they're not going to spike your blood sugar. Many Americans think that they're the only nutrients with that property.
Yeah you're right. Influencers have more, well, influence than scientists these days unfortunately
Scientists have never really had that much influence. See: high priests, religion, politics, &c.
You're absolutely right but Americans don't consider rice + legumes (the standard international poverty meal) to be a "real meal" like the rest of the world.
In general the American diet is very meat-based. Once you hold meat as constant, you realize that fast-food or ultraprocessed food are the cheapest way to get a meat-based meal. E.g. McDonald's is probably the cheapest way to buy a hot meal containing beef (and it used to be even cheaper, you could add fries+coke for just 50c in the past). A lot of poor Americans eat hotdog sausages, microwave meals etc just to get some kind of meat even if it's low quality.
> fast-food or ultraprocessed food are the cheapest way to get a meat-based meal
Are you sure? Let's take the example of the McDonald's Big Mac which is $6.72 [0]
The between the 2 patties, the sandwich contains 25g of protein (not grass fed beef) per sandwich. It's fair to assume the majority of the cost of the ingredients of a burger is the meat. The rest is pretty cheap because you only need a small quantity of it to complete the meal.
Here are prices of Costco grass fed beef patties: [1]
15 patties for $36.31 Each patty contains 26 grams of protein, which is more protein than both patties of the Big Mac combined.
cost per patty = $36.31/15 = $2.42
cost of Big Mac = $6.72
That doesn't even come close to the majority of the cost of the Big Mac. I could do a full analysis of each ingredient, but I think it's clear from this data that fast food is not significantly cheaper, especially considering that the Costco patties are higher quality.
Edit: formatting, and also burgers are super fast and easy to cook at home.
[0] https://www.mac-menus.com/big-mac/ [1] https://sameday.costco.com/store/costco/products/20021199-ki...
Ready to eat food at larger gas stations has probably replaced some of the cheaper fast food.
Why make 2 stops and all that.
for what it's worth, 7-Eleven® Bahama Mama is a high quality meat product from schmidts sausage.
Same with their dogs, excellent stuff.
Source: hot dog connoisseur and ex-cashier
It's not just the price of the food, it's the time cost of going to the store, preparing the ingredients, cooking, washing dishes... You are looking at the issue through a myopic lens.
You are assuming access to a grocery store. Disproportionately poor people live in food deserts and have to rely on dollar stores and other things where fruit and vegetables are expensive.
Also, if you are busy single person, basically anything not shelf stable is expensive because you have to buy it in high quantities and it will go to waste if you are not skilled at storage. I, a mature adult, know how to store things, but as a younger person things went to rot a lot from inexperience.
Then there is prep. I spent literally all day on sunday just preparing food for the week. It's about 10-12 hours. That's what 2 hours a day to cook during the week. I have lied to myself and said, "oh, I'll cook something" and then eaten out all day from being busy or being exhausted. To save money stuff I could jam into the microwave was cheaper.
This is how you get there. I cook from fresh vegetables all the time now, but I have the time and energy for it. That just wasn't true at all when I was younger.
> an estimated 13.5 million people in the United States have low access to a supermarket or large grocery store [0]
That's 4% of the population. Food deserts explain some of it but not the majority
The rest yeah I absolutely agree with. People are stressed and time deficient, don't have food storage and prep skills
Maybe in a roundabout way it just comes back to money? If you need to work or study too much and don't feel you have the time to cook, you'll get the easiest options you know
Part of it can be overcome with strategy. I spend 15 minutes a day on food prep and couldnt imagine how I'd make my diet healthier. I'm sure what you make is much more elaborate though haha
0: https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2011/december/data-feat...
> poor people live in food deserts
food deserts are fake. In college I was poor and took a 45 minute public transit commute (2 hops) to the shop-rite. Granny cart and all
> I don't understand how people come to this conclusion
Then maybe you shouldn't speak on it until you understand how they came to this conclusion. Knowing you have opinions based on ignorance and refusing to change isn't a good way to live.
You're misunderstanding what I meant
Put another way: it doesn't make sense for people to come to that conclusion because it's so obviously wrong if they actually check prices
I then give examples
This should be top comment
When I was visiting the US I was shocked how much more expensive “real” food is. Here I am spending more if I eat out or processed food versus cooking my own food at home. In the US it was basically the inverse, didn’t make any sense to me. (N=1 and 10 year old experience, but it seems to have only gotten more extreme since)
I don't see this at all. Staple foods are cheap and abundant. Fruits and vegetables don't cost much at all. Some animal proteins can get a bit pricy (beef mostly) but chicken and pork aren't that expensive. Eggs are like $2 a dozen.
I love my meat but if I switched to a vegetarian diet it would be trivial to make varied, delicious meals at $1.50-$2 a portion.
Where? It's $4 for a dozen eggs where I am and I think that's pretty cheap. It's $5 for a bag of shitty apples. And then another $5 for a bag of oranges, so my kid can have fruit for the week. I cook from nothing but fresh and my kid gets one bag of chips or cookies a week. I buy 2lbs of meat for us both. I still spend over 100 dollars.
I guess we could have beans and rice every day, but I don't think it's a lot to give my kid a varied diet based on what's in season. Out of season is awful and that's how I ended up spending $15 on berries my kid wanted.
When people talk about these cheap meals, I wonder if they just expect everyone to eat the same thing every day at the lowest quality. I can go to a budget grocery store and get $3 eggs. That's true, but I feel like the local national chain should ve a good enough yard stick.
I bought 12 eggs from trader joe's yesterday for $2, organics were $5
I get 18 eggs from another grocery store for about $5 and kroger has them really cheap too. Even Whole Foods has 18 for $5-ish in one brand and much more $$ in another.
Publix is the egg-gouger around me (and just overpriced in general)
IMHO the same cheap whole food meals are healthier than a variety of $2 frozen dinners.
You can hit a middle-ground with some frozen stuff to save a little time and money a few days per week too.
I do most of my grocery shopping at Target. In my large Midwestern city 12 large eggs are $2. A 3 lb bag of apples is $4. A 3 lb bag of oranges is $4.29.
>When people talk about these cheap meals, I wonder if they just expect everyone to eat the same thing every day at the lowest quality.
Eating cheap doesn't have to mean eating the same shit meal every day. I like to have a framework to work from where I have some structure but can vary it a lot based on what I want to eat. Rice+vegetable(s)+protein has endless variations. One week I might do a taco style rice bowl. The next maybe I do an Asian bowl. Stews are also great for this. By varying the ingredients a bit and using different spices I can get stews with very different flavor profiles that taste great.
The messaging on the website pretty much agrees with you, then.
Except for the incredibly wrong and bad advice that Americans, who already eat too much meat, should eat even more meat, sure.
While the over-arc of this message is good (avoid packaged and processed food) I personally don’t like the advice that these are not top tier foods: non-GMO organic whole wheat (i.e., not soaked with pesticides), brown rice, and other pesticide-free whole grains —- all in moderation.
I also don’t like the emphasis on meat protein. Small amounts of meat protein a few times a week are definitely healthy for most people, but organic (not soaked in pesticides) beans, lentils, etc. are almost certainly a healthy way to consume extra protein.
I sense the ugly hand of the meat industry in realfood.gov. I think if more people understood how (especially) chickens and pigs are tortured in meat production, it would help people who are addicted to excess meat cut back on their consumption to just what they need for good health.
EDIT: the documentary movie The Game Changers (2018) is an excellent source of information. The scenes interviewing huge muscular vegetarian NFL football players really put the lie to the ‘must have meat’ addicts. That said, I still think small amounts of meat protein are very healthy for most people.
I totally agree on all three accounts: unprocessed foods are great, organic wheats are good, and the concerning focus on abundance of red meat. I think we are going through a fad of "we need to gobble down as much protein as we can". I agree it's reasonable we need more, and especially older adults at risk of falling. I am concerned that there are so many junior residents that I work with that are throwing back protein shakes because they are "optimizing their macros". So many of these protein powders have added sugar and are contaminated with heavy metals! I will commend the guidelines for supporting lentils, beans and other pulses.
Great! How will the reductions in consumer protection, health, FDA, etc. - by this current administration impact that?
https://www.food-safety.com/articles/11004-a-2025-timeline-o...
I see how the article is framed, but I see a lot of good things in that timeline:
Anything with money amounts, my next question is how much money were we previously spending on that thing.
If simply spending money worked USA would be the most healthy.
Look, we could spend a fraction of what we do, but then there would be people who get things for free or even fraudulently. You can see just how bad that would be from an American mindset.
Roughly $20-30 million/year specifically aimed at nutrition, additives and diet-related food safety. So this is a 8-10x increase.
I'm not seeing numbers supporting that https://www.fda.gov/media/166050/download
What they see as necessary to combat childhood chronic disease is not necessarily what most scientists would say is necessary to combat childhood chronic disease, and might even be detrimental. Also if the new dietary recommendations are any clue, what they see as "improving nutrition" might be questionable.
The devil is in the details.
> $235 million specifically aimed at improving nutrition, controlling food additives and addressing food safety
Musk’s disastrous months with the admin defunded and ended a program bringing local farmers’ produce et al to public schools around my state so I’m a little bitter seeing this one.
Even then, 95% of it is probably already earmarked / targeted for some friend's grift.
Without a doubt
You asking how reductions in protections related to processed food (that already allow ultra processed foods) will affect safety when the new advice is to eat "real food" and seems to emphasize items that are pretty easy to confirm visually?
(I mean besides the fact that the FDA came into existence due to things like selling watered down white paint as "milk")
I've seen ultra-processed food mentioned in other countries as well. It's a buzzword with no meaning.
Pasteurization saves lives. Flash-frozen foods retain more nutrition in transit, while freezing seafood kills parasites. And even the best bread and butter are as processed as food can get.
I'm reading the "chemical additives" list and it's a mix of obviously harmful things with known safe things added in trace concentrations - there's no intellectual rigor and a lot of fearmomgering.
When I hear "ultra-processed," here's what comes to mind:
- little Debbie snack cakes
- cereals
- white breads
- hot dogs
- chips
- pizza rolls
- Velveeta
- pop tarts
So I guess you're right, it has no meaning. But you're way off, I don't think anyone is talking about frozen raw fish as "ultra processed", or pasteurized milk.
How can be something simple as bread be ultra processed? We can prepare it at home.
Looking at the ingredients list on Wonderbread white bread, could you make that at home?
You can make bread with salt, flour, yeast, and water. Most breads in the grocery store, however, have considerably more ingredients, which are more in the purpose of treating the foodstuff as an industrial product rather than for nutritional purposes.
(That's not automatically bad btw. The amount of ultraprocessed food you can eat is actually probably quite a lot in relative terms before it starts causing health problems --- the problem is when it becomes 70-80% of your diet.)
He's talking about "wonder bread" and other factory breads that have had much of their nutrients stripped and some put back, to the detriment of their absorption. Some also are concerned with artificially included preservatives and the unknown unknowns of putting them in places (even if there's a common natural source in another food).
Homemade bread is certainly not ultraprocessed (especially if made with unbleached flour or even better, whole wheat flour), but factory bread most certainly is considered ultraprocessed.
Yes and no. It's not a good word, but it has generally been defined in a way that wouldn't include any of the steps you mentioned.
One common description is that it includes lots of ingredients you wouldn't find in your kitchen.
It sometimes also includes ingredients that have been turned into extremely fine powder, and other very heavy industrial processing. My way of thinking of this is: adults shouldn't eat baby food. Some fast food essentially becomes way to easy to absorb.
I think this interview had a really good description about the problems of the "ultra-processed" label.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAPgzCiSk9Y&t=377s
But at least the label is triggering some interesting discussions and awareness about bad aspects of industrial fast food.
Even the original margarine (before the invention of hydrogenation) is more processed than the best bread and butter.
To quote from Ultra-Processed People:
Mège-Mouriès took cheap solid fat from a cow (suet), rendered it (heated it up with some water), digested it with some enzymes from a sheep stomach to break down the cellular tissue holding the fat together, then it was sieved, allowed to set, extruded from between two plates, bleached with acid, washed with water,warmed, and finally mixed with bicarb, milk protein, cow-udder tissue and annatto (a yellow food colouring derived from seeds of the achiote tree). The result was a spreadable, plausible butter substitute.
Ironic that a steak is one of the three things showing up on the landing page. Is that the beef lobby money coming in?
I enjoy an occasional steak but if the goal is to improve diet of masses, it’s not the food I’d put at the center.
The "scientific foundation" PDF does disclose several financial relationships with the National Cattlemen's Beef Association and other cow-related lobbyists.
High protein, nutrient dense. Definitely want to get grass-fed or pasture raised though. Shouldn't eat it all the time because it has a high calorie content, but steak isn't bad. They're probably showing a steak to indicate that eating meat is good, not just steak in general. Keto and carnivore diets have been shown to be pretty good for people with inflammatory conditions.
> Keto and carnivore diets have been shown to be pretty good for people with inflammatory conditions
No. The scientific evidence of a carnivore diet reducing inflammation is pretty weak. The scientific evidence of a vegan diet reducing inflammation is way stronger.
It's not just way stronger, it's basically conclusive.
Worth noting that ruminants have less variance between "good diets" and "bad diets" for the animals than other animal protein sources. IE: you're better off with a grain fed steak than an unnaturally fed non-ruminant animal.
As to the calories, yes calories count, but the fact that it is calorie dense doesn't necessarily mean you should avoid it so much as be aware if you are mixing sources and having excessive meals. I know a lot of people on carnivore diets for inflammatory and diabetic control and the total calorie intake is less of an issue in those cases. Even with a pound of steak and a dozen eggs a day, weight loss is still happening for overweight diabetics on carnivore diets.
Just meat is very sating and impossible for most people to overeat in practice... at least from my own experience and exposure. The relative mono diet also helps with this.
Yeah, I agree, I'm not really a calorie counter. (I tend to get irritated by the "a calorie is a calorie" folk because nutrient quality is the most important thing). It's occasionally worth paying attention to calories with some foods though, like bacon or whatnot because it's very easy to eat a small volume but a lot of calories.
My advice in the various keto-carnivore and diabetic groups I'm in is to concentrate on getting used to the diet first and only start counting calories after a prolonged (months long) stall or gaining weight for multiple weeks.
It's too easy to obsess, and I've experienced times where I'll stall when not eating enough more than eating too much when I'm eating clean. I have digestive issues from Trulicity/Ozempic and have a hard time eating enough, and my metabolism is highly dysfunctional... If I eat 1500 calories a day, about my natural hunger level at this point, I won't lose anything, but if I eat closer to 3000-3400/day, I will lose weight. It seems counter-intuitive but it's true.
> Definitely want to get grass-fed or pasture raised though.
Yeah I mean if you're going to maximize your impact just go all out right. Eating beef, particularly in the US, is one of the worst actions you can take environmentally speaking.
More people need to understand how incredibly destructive cattle ranching has been around the world. In the US in particular pretty much all BLM and Forest Service land that isn't protected as wilderness or permitted for extraction (oil/forestry/etc) is used for ranching. That is an enormous area that has literally been turned to cow shit. Even where the cattle don't eat all vegetation in sight they trample habitat and entirely change the ecology of the area.
Source: I spent three years traveling around the western US from 2019-2022 and camped almost exclusively on public lands during that time. The number of beautiful places I've seen completely covered in cow shit is utterly appalling. Why should we let agribusiness use OUR land this way? It is truly such a waste.
Depends if it's eye of round or rib eye. I think the usual steak emoji is a porter house. All 3 of them have very different protein/fat ratios (and thus calories)
Obviously the beef lobby is involved. They are masters of public opinion and extremely good at what they do.
If Lysenko Jr wants us all to eat steaks, he should get to work on either eliminating ticks, or creating a cure for alphagal (alpha galactose) allergy transmitted by many ticks. I've had to stop eating beef (my wife gives me a little bite of her steak once in awhile), along with lamb and pork (pork seems to be less of a problem than beef, but I still have to eat it in moderation).
In case you're not familiar with this allergy, it doesn't behave like other food allergies: instead of getting instant symptoms, it hits you hours later, making it hard to figure out why you suddenly have hives---unless you already know about alpha gal.
That's rough... I have issues when I eat legumes and wheat... I still like pasta and pretty much had peanut butter every day of my life up to a few years ago. When I manage to stick to a meat centered diet I do better... but it's easy to get off track in social circles.
>he should get to work on either eliminating ticks, or creating a cure for alphagal
Or he should just lobby to make high quality, lean, grass-fed steaks cheaper so everyone who wants to consume them can consume them. It's not currently cheap.
I'm sure the government is trying. The government weaponized alpha-gal in the first place.
"In over 24,000 participants from the NHANES study, high saturated fatty acid intake was associated with an 8% increase in all cause mortality risk. A meta-analysis with over 1,100,000 total participants showed that high intake of saturated fats was also correlated to a 10% increase in coronary heart disease mortality risk" (https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.118.31403...)
(there is an argument for why this shouldn't apply to grass-fed meat but that is an extremely small minority of meat sold)
survey based study, correlation is not causation, and correlated affects not separable from other biases.
that is an impossible standard to apply to diet-based research which is incredibly expensive to otherwise study (e.g, you need a metabolic ward and at that point you'd complain about small N).
We know saturated fat increases LDL, we know LDL contributes to CVD. This is still an area of active research and there are small populations of people that don't accept the consensus but it is still very much best-practice keep your LDL low.
See Minnesota asylum study... Come up with something resembling that quality that says otherwise.
Whole milk, cheese, and steak are not the usual foods I associate with health. Unfortunately this is not backed by scientific evidence.
I visited a heart doctor at Duke research medical center a few years back. His comments then were that dairy products were the most inflammatory foods for humans and a major contributor to heart disease by gunking up our bloodstreams.
Red meat has a link to colorectal cancer.
https://food-guide.canada.ca/en/food-guide-snapshot/
What is the top thing shown on the plate here?
RFKjr, the guy who feeds roadkill to his brain worm, thinks more saturated fat = good, 'seed oil' = bad.
RFKjr is generally an idiot, but saturated fat = good, seed oil = bad is actually correct. For instance: https://health.clevelandclinic.org/seed-oils-are-they-actual...
Saturated fats are good because they're more stable than poly-unsaturated fats for instance.
If you do consume a seed oil (which you really shouldn't -- there's no benefit), you should get a cold-pressed one. But that would be more expensive, so if you're paying more you might as well just get something good like avacado oil or coconut oil.
The link you gave doesn't support your claim that saturated fat is good.
In fact, from the very same site, here's another article saying it's not: https://health.clevelandclinic.org/saturated-fats-finding-a-...
Saturated fat is OK in moderate amounts, but if you eat too much, it drives up your cholesterol because your body converts saturated fat into cholesterol[1][2].
The issue I have with this new food pyramid is the guidance ignores the danger of saturated fat. It lists "meats" and "full-fat dairy" among sources of "healthy fats", and that's just not true. In the picture that shows sources of protein/fat, 11 out of 13 of the items are animal-based fats. With a giant ribeye steak, cheese, butter, and whole milk specifically (not just milk), they're simply not giving an accurate picture of healthy fat sources.
I personally don't think seed oils are bad, but even if they were, it does not follow that saturated fat is good. The evidence shows otherwise, for one thing, plus it's not like seed oils and saturated fat are the only two kinds of fat. There are plenty of unsaturated fats which aren't seed oils.
---
[1] https://medlineplus.gov/ency/patientinstructions/000838.htm
[2] https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/healthy-eating/eat-s...
This isn't true, per your own link.
The point the Cleveland Clinic page makes is that seed oils tend to be what's used in ultra-processed foods, and those are bad for you. So if you avoid seed oils, you wind up avoiding the bad things as a second order effect.
Aside from that it's just hand-wavey "they use chemicals to make it! It doesn't have nutrients beyond the fat!". There's nothing to indicate that using sunflower or peanut oil is any worse for you than using walnut oil.
The connection between omega-6 fats and inflammation is a whole lot more tenuous than the link between ultra-processed foods and inflammation.
Just Google "seed oils health" and look at the reputable results (Cleveland Clinic, various universities, Mayo Clinic, etc), and you'll see opinions across the board. Some say "Bad". Some say "Not bad". Some say "Unsure".
Jury is still out on this one.
And I think lumping all seed oils into one category isn't helping. Maybe canola oil is OK and sesame oil is not. Or vice versa.
I think it's generally fair to lump them together, because the types of fats you get in them are similar.
The history of cotton seed oil is interesting. After reading that, I would challenge people to think if that's really something they'd want in their body. Other than cost, I see no downside to avoiding seed oils and a lot of upside: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottonseed_oil#Economic_histor...
Looking at the article, I'm not sure I see the problem.
> Other than cost, I see no downside to avoiding seed oils and a lot of upside
The taste of food in certain recipes (that don't involve cooking the oil) varies widely with the oil used. In some recipes, canola oil tastes better than olive oil (by a significant margin - no one would eat it with olive oil).
Cost was never a factor for me (even as a student). Oil is amongst the least expensive things in the food I cook.
I mean, what you want to put in your body is up to you, but an industrial byproduct that involves a lot of chemistry seems like something I'm not a fan of. Also if you go past the history a bit: "The FDA released its final determination that Partially Hydrogenated Oils (PHOs), which include partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil, are not Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) in 2015."
Olive oil definitely has a flavor, but other oils are pretty neutral (I cook with avacado oil because of the high smoke point and I don't notice it really effecting anything). Also you have to keep in mind that those seed oils have a neutral flavor because they've been through a deodorizing chemical process, otherwise they'd taste/smell rancid.
Exactly this. Rapeseed oil is obviously a seed oil. You can have a chemically extracted version or a cold-pressed version. "Seed oil is bad for you" is a typical simplistic Twitter/Reddit conspiracy theory.
This is a great example of how harming your own credibility can damage an otherwise correct and uncontroversial message. RFK Jr. has surrounded himself in controversy, and that controversy is really dominating a lot of this conversation and drowning out the message. Given how he's acted, I don't blame anyone for being skeptical of him, even if this particular food pyramid seems to be a good move that would itself be uncontroversial if provided by a different messenger.
True, but, I think this is also an important lesson in considering the arguments not just a source. Nobody is ever 100% right or 100% wrong, and just leaning on arguments of authority is lazy thinking.
"inflammation"! It's always "inflammation". What a crock.
You want more inflammation?
Inflammation is a real thing you can measure in the body, you know. (C Reactive Protein for instance). It's behind a lot of diseases.
The reason WHY it's "always" inflammation is because the standard american diet CREATES a lot of inflammation. You'll probably have to worry about hearing that buzzword a lot less if people ate better..
Steak’s not great for you, but in moderation is probably a better source of calories than refined grains, which should be treated more or less the same as candy.
I wish we could move past the "highly processed food" thing.
You can engineer healthy food. The problems isn't the processing. Its that most people who are engineering food do not have "healthy" among the goals.
We're conflating "designed" with "designed recklessly".
It matters because a lot of people can't afford the diet suggested here. The messaging needs to distinguish between adding protein powder because there's no meat available, and living on Cheetos because there's no meat available, and "highly processed" fails to do that.
The reason we're conflating them is because there is a strong correlation between "highly processed food" and "designed recklessly". If you look at Carlos Monteiro (The pioneer in this domain) he operationalized it with the NOVA metric. NOVA 4 being the closest to what you're talking about:
"Industrially manufactured food products made up of several ingredients (formulations) including sugar, oils, fats and salt (generally in combination and in higher amounts than in processed foods) and food substances of no or rare culinary use (such as high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, modified starches and protein isolates)..." [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_classification
I highly recommend Chris van Tulleken's Ultra-processed people for a more indepth read on this fat correlation (excuse the pun :))
> You can engineer healthy food.
Sure, but these companies mostly want to engineer the cheapest shit they can legally sell. It's also valid from regular food, it's a race to the bottom, and that's why veggies/fruit are less and less nutritious over the years
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10969708/
> It matters because a lot of people can't afford the diet suggested here.
#1 economy in the world baby!!! 75% of your country is overweight or obese but somehow they can't "afford" good food
This article has a pretty good history of how the research has evolved: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/01/13/why-is-the-ame...
The latest conclusion seems to be that the deadly combo is ultra processed foods with high calorie density. That’s what causes us to overeat garbage. Ultra processed low calorie foods are often still junk, but not what is killing us.
Few ingredients is code for white people’s ideas of food.
Example: Curry has and average of 10-15 ingredients. Malaysian 15-20. Thai: 15–20. China: 10–16. Indonesia: 20–25. Mexican Moles 20-30. Etc…..
note: I expect this is unintentional. The authors of the new recommendations think more ingredients = processed. But it still ends up being an accidental judgement against other cultures.
Indonesia — 20–25
Malaysia — 15–20
Thailand — 15–20
India — 12–18
Mexico — 12–18
Ethiopia — 14–18
China — 10–16
Vietnam — 10–16
Morocco — 10–15
South Korea — 10–15
Italy — 4–7
Japan — 5–8
France — 6–9
Spain — 5–9
Greece — 6–10
United Kingdom — 5–9
Germany — 5–9
Austria — 5–9
Switzerland — 5–9
It's an interesting point. I would suggest the its kinda recursive.
Good food ingredients are those which are or composed of Good food ingredients.
We can intuitively realize that A salad composed of Tomatoes, lettuce, radish, kale, cucumber, figs etc is at least as good as just eating Tomatoes. But each of those ingredients is a simple good food. IMO the issue is fractionation and concentration (and is weighted by dose). Corn on the cob, good. Corn syrup, bad.
Lots of the traditional dishes from the places you mentioned would be using very whole foods. Like a traditional, non industrial, mole is pretty much a gravy/sauce of very nutrition whole foods. But it's notable there is a highly processed equivalent in a jar.
Michael Pollan interestingly noted that when people cook food for themselves more or less from scratch they usually default to high quality whole foods because we often cannot make the low quality ultra-processed food in our own homes, they can only be made with industrial/factory equipment.
I’m pretty sure there was a shot of curry in the video
As someone with psoriotic arthritis, this is just my diet (plus avoiding gluten) and honestly following it has made me feel alot better even aside from preventing the psoriosis
Good initiative from the government, i wouldnt have expected them to do something that messes with junk food corporations profits like this
Exactly, if one eats like the top shelf of the pyramid (minus the milk products) this looks like autoimmune protocol diets.
Yeah, I was expecting read something that made me mad, but this is basically how I’ve eaten my whole life. I’ve never subscribed to any special diet, but I like whole milk, I like eating meat and veggies, I don’t enjoy sliced bread, and I avoid sugary things. I walk a lot every day. Probably thanks to genetics, but I’ve been thin my whole life and the only chronic issues I’ve had tend to be muscle-tendon things from bad posture while sitting at the computer, or overdoing it when I get into a hobby like bouldering. Near 40 and I hope I can keep my health and be active well into my 70s at least.
I am not sure it messes with their profits at all.
For comparison think about smoking. Imagine a government 70s ad that says "As a nation we are now not smoking and showed people enjoying themselves without a cigatette", but in addition cigatettes carry on being sold anyway. The addiction wins.
This is the first food recommendation from the government that makes sense.
6-11 servings of grains, 3-5 veges, 2-4 fruit, 2-3 dairy, 2-3 protein (all sources), minimal fat was absurd and bad. Protein is until you hit your needed macros. Fats are as needed. Processed grains are basically empty calories. a cup or two of whole grains is all you really need and thats it.
They’re lying to you that the last guidelines were the food pyramid people are remembering from the 1990s.
These are the prior recommendations: https://lgpress.clemson.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2024/...
100% evidence based but not branded as contrarian by a bunch of Instagram idiots so people assume they didn’t exist.
Those prior recommendations you supplied are worse than the current ones.
Added Sugar: it says <50grams when its clear that NO added sugar is best as the new guidelines suggest.
Fat: it says to choose low fat cuts 95% and low fat milk. There is no basis for these options. you are just reducing the nutrients from fat. You should just drink/eat less of the fatty food if it contains fat, not choose a processed version that removes part of it.
Protein: The protein section clearly skews towards plant based proteins which are fine but for the majority of people animal proteins are going to be healthier and easier to eat enough of. The protein amounts to around 35-60 grams of protein depending on the sources/amounts listed which is not ideal for a properly functioning human
Sodium: It says in multiple places to lower sodium but the studies on sodium were correlative not causative. Meaning there is no basis for a low sodium diet unless you have other health conditions.
So no they are not lying to you and these new guidelines are 100% evidence based given the new evidence that we have had for the last 30 years.
> Added Sugar: it says <50grams when its clear that NO added sugar is best as the new guidelines suggest.
False. Science studies show that up to 50 grams has little effect on your health.
>Fat: it says to choose low fat cuts 95% and low fat milk. There is no basis for these options. you are just reducing the nutrients from fat. You should just drink/eat less of the fatty food if it contains fat, not choose a processed version that removes part of it.
False, it says to choose lean protein and explicitly calls out to avoid processed meat. A lean cut of meat is not "processed" it comes that way.
> Protein: The protein section clearly skews towards plant based proteins which are fine but for the majority of people animal proteins are going to be healthier and easier to eat enough of. The protein amounts to around 35-60 grams of protein depending on the sources/amounts listed which is not ideal for a properly functioning human
False, red meat has been show to be associated with increased cardiovascular disease.
While the risk of fat and salt is likely overblown, overall the previous guidelines were pretty good. These new ones don't call out the dangers of things like red meat.
Those science studies are a load of bull if they say added sugar up to 50 GRAMS has no effect on your health. Your gut develops a craving for it like no other and your insulin spikes much harder when you intake that much on daily basis. When you're off sugar for a while, you notice how those "compulsions" you have during groceries is just due to your gut yearning for some sugar. Now fruits and natural sugar are a lot better, but even them I wouldn't consume excessively if you are in the business of high focus -work.
Dairy (the milk of another mammal's baby) only "makes sense" as a result of deep conditioning that it is normal, necessary and natural. Time to wake up from this lullaby.
Just compare this with actual scientific findings and see for yourself: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-025-03570-5
For the lazier folk:
> Higher intakes of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, unsaturated fats, nuts, legumes and low-fat dairy products were linked to greater odds of healthy aging, whereas higher intakes of trans fats, sodium, sugary beverages and red or processed meats (or both) were inversely associated.
That article uses the Nurse's Health Study and nurses are some of the least healthy people I've ever met.
How are you going to infer what's harmful if you're only going to research healthy people?
I was joking but, actually, it's just random food surveys and the categories are too broad to take seriously.
Tons of studies are based on this data and just look at our outcomes. This data is poison.
Wow thank god it's my fault im sick and i can make personal choices to stop chronic conditions! I was worried it might have something to do with material conditions i live in but also can not control, or worse that i might require medicine! Relatedly its a great thing that "real food" access isn't class-based.
Really strange comment. You're offended by the implication that what we eat may impact our health?
Regarding the class comment, sure a access to some food is class based, but pretty much all westerners can afford basic "real food". I know because I've lived on minimum wage and could buy eggs, rice, beans, chicken thigh, etc.
Not the person you're responding to, but the thing that frustrates me isn't that they're saying to eat healthy, but that they're acting like that's the only thing we need to change, while actively deregulating pretty much everything else that also affects health.
Yes, obviously what we eat affects our health, I don't think that's ever been in dispute by any significant number of people (despite what the inbreds who love RFK Jr. seem to think), but part of the frustration is that they're acting that that can solely explain all chronic illnesses, ignoring things like air pollution (which they are actively deregulating).
Oh, also, RFK Jr. telling people to eat at Five Guys because they fry their fries in beef tallow is really dumb and is likely to lead to worse health outcomes.
Wait I thought that was shake shack, not five guys? Don't five guys use peanut oil...???
I think it was Steak and Shake, I think you’re right. Sorry.
Point still stands.
> We are ending the war on protein. Every meal must prioritize high-quality, nutrient-dense protein from both animal and plant sources, paired with healthy fats from whole foods such as eggs, seafood, meats, full-fat dairy, nuts, seeds, olives, and avocados.
This is some seriously radical stuff, if you take it literally. Every single meal you eat "must" prioritize protein? Why? Who is lacking protein in America?
The "protein" part of the "new" pyramid does not mention legumes (beans, peas, chickpeas, lentils, lupins...) despite them being a highly efficient source of proteins.
"Frozen peas" and "Green beans" make an appearance on the pyramid, but yes the omission of any others is glaring.
Almonds and peanuts make an appearance lower than red meat on the pyramid, which is wild to me.
I see a lot of people complaining about red meat.
It’s not the healthiest food, but it’s a much weaker risk factor than diets high in processed foods (including processed meats), refined carbs, added sugar, and excess salt.
For adults (25–64), the biggest diet-linked contributors to cardiometabolic death were sugar-sweetened beverages and processed meats. [1]
also form the paper:
High sodium intake → ~66,000 deaths (9.5%)
Low nuts & seeds intake → ~59,000 deaths (8.5%)
High processed meat intake → ~57,000 deaths (8.2%)
Low seafood omega-3 intake → ~54,000 deaths (7.8%)
Low vegetable intake → ~53,400 deaths (7.6%)
Low fruit intake → ~52,000 deaths (7.5%)
High sugar-sweetened beverage intake → ~51,000 deaths (7.4%) Low whole-grain intake → ~41,000 deaths (5.9%)
High unprocessed red meat intake → ~2,900 deaths (0.4%)
(Full table is on page 5 of the linked paper)
[1] https://episeminars.web.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/754...
Agreed, much of the angst towards "meat" or "red meat" really ought to be stated as carcinogenic nitrosamines . When you cook nitrate rich red meat at high temperatures you get nitrosamines (less when you use herbs like rosemary) ...
Meat has it's own internal ranking: Fish, boneless skinless chicken, low fat red meat cuts, high fat red meat, processed/preserved red meats (like sausage, bacon, sandwich meat etc) ... We should shift left in our meat consumption.
As someone who eats whole fruits and vegetables, some meat and fish, etc. already, I would like to feel more confident in the following:
- there is no way that any of the fish I am eating was from polluted water or contains any harmful chemicals.
- there is no way that any of the meat I am eating was sick, raised in horrible conditions, had cancer, had significant wounds or puss-producing sores, was fed the feces of other animals, was fed chemicals or hormones, etc.
- there is no way that any of the vegetables I am eating were watered with dirty water or fertilized or exposed to pesticides that are not 100% safe.
It’s not perfect, but buying bulk meat directly from a farmer can greatly reduce the issues you listed above.
I appreciate the nod to whole milk, which has been repeatedly shown to be associated with _lower_ obesity in children. E.g. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31851302/, many other studies.
This is for children and adolescents, which have different needs than the average adult. It's also just a meta analysis of literature with zero RCTs and a suggestive correlation. Unfortunately, these new guidelines don't seem even nearly detailed enough to cover these kinds of differences. The usual guidelines are well over 150 pages.
What other sources do you have besides that one observational study?
This is a meta-analysis of 28 studies. "Of 5862 reports identified by the search, 28 met the inclusion criteria: 20 were cross-sectional and 8 were prospective cohort."
No RCTs and it isn't clear that the studies were even focused on milk as a contributor to obesity, so they could be highly susceptible to confounders.
I appreciate the nod to whole milk because 'lite' milk is, well, Nick Offerman said it best as Ron from Parks and Recreation:
"There's only one thing I hate more than lying: Skim milk. Which is water that's lying about being milk"
You know that character is a joke, right?
Yeah, but that particular line rings true for me because I've used similar hyperbole when describing lite milk in comparison to real / whole milk.
If you can't tell the difference, then it's been a long time since you've had whole milk.
"We're ending the war on protein"
Weird branding and culture war stuff aside, this is probably the least objectionable thing this health administration has done.
That said, I don't know if this would actually move the needle much. The Japanese diet includes so much more processed foods and less protein and they still live longer, healthier lives. I think the ultimate factors are still portion sizes, environment, activity, and genetics.
The new pyramid appears to have LESS protein in it than the Michelle Obama 2011 version, MyPlate.
It's just all macho nonsense to make them think they're going to turn everyone into navy seals or something, the same reason they install gyms and pull up bars at airports...it makes a certain demographic excited that this is the end of gay / fat / weak people or something.
Moderately amused at the quote "We are ending the war on protein." In my experience, every single brand in recent years has been coalescing around the idea of making protein bars, drinks, prominently labeling the amount of grams of protein are in items, etc.
I'm not opposed, as protein seems to be a good target to prioritize, but claiming there's a war on protein just seems so out of touch to the point of absurdity. It's practically the only thing that people care about right now.
Yeah, (1) there is no "war on protein," (2) you do not need to eat very much protein unless you are trying to build muscle and you already work out a lot.
The normal recommended daily intake for protein is 0.8 g/kg. 1.2-1.6 is silly; that's a recommendation for athletes.¹
Starches have been a dietary staple in pretty much every society forever. Sugars have not. It's silly that they treat grains as a "sometimes" food.
There's also the weird boogeyman of "processed food." Almost all food is processed to some degree & always has been. We've been cooking, baking, juicing, fermenting, chopping, grinding, mashing, etc. long enough that it influenced the shape of our teeth. Certainly we haven't been making Pizza Pockets that long, but the issue there isn't processing, it's ingredients. And the reason people buy Pizza Pockets isn't that they think they're healthy—it's that Pizza Pockets only need to be microwaved, and cooking a real meal takes time that a lot of people just don't have.
[1]: https://www.strongerbyscience.com/athlete-protein-intake/
Starches are basically glucose. They have a massive insulin response -- often even worse than sugar (because you eat starches in a much higher volume since they don't usually taste sweet).
It's very hard to overeat protein naturally. It's very easy to overeat starches and other carbohydrates naturally.
With regard to "processed" food, it's not a great label. I would use this metric: could you conceivably produce this in an average kitchen with the raw materials? If you can, it's probably safe, if you can't, it's probably something you shouldn't eat. For instance, processing often means "partially hydrogenating" a fat, or milling grains into a fine dust and bleaching them. Sometimes chemically produced oils are deodorized, because they would otherwise smell very unpalatable. You generally should not want your food to be bleached or deodorized..
'Processed' generally means 'chemically modified', a la hydrogenated vegetable oil.
Assuming that "chemical modification" is when you modify something by adding a chemical reagent to it, milk is chemically modified to create cheese curds, sugars are chemically modified to create vinegar and alcohol, and breads & cakes are chemically modified when they rise.
However, this definition of chemical modification doesn't really include hydrogenated vegetable oil. Industrial hydrogenation is done by raising oil to very high temperatures in the presence of a nickel catalyst & then adding hydrogen. We modify it on a chemical level, but primarily by heating it, not by adding reactive substances. And if that counts as chemical modification, then so does cooking!
Anyway, no—people generally used "processed" to describe a particular vibe they get from certain foodstuffs whose production seems too industrialized. There's no rigorous basis for determining what is and isn't "processed" because people use it to describe their feelings about food, not any underlying property of food.
If you search a simple question like "is bread processed," you get a bunch of articles saying "well, since there's no agreed-upon definition for processing and the definitions we do have aren't particularly clear, there's really no answer to the question. But don't worry, because (given the overwhelming vagueness of the category), it's also impossible to say whether processed foods as a category have any health implications, so you shouldn't worry about it."
Generally the definition for ultra-processed foods includes a lot more than that. Some definitions even include "wrapping in plastic".
> protein bars, drinks, prominently labeling the amount of grams of protein
Most of which are loaded with crazy amounts of sugar to make them taste good.
Have you ever looked at the label on a cup of non-plain "Greek" yogurt? (Which is 90% of the yogurt aisle.)
Not to mention, that refined proteins don't have well balanced amino acid profiles and the lack of well balanced essential fatty acids to go with them is also a serious issue IMO.
Your comment applies almost exclusively to plant-based protein (as opposed to milk, egg or other animal protein)
Milk, egg and other animal proteins are mostly consumed whole, and not refined, which does tend to reduce the completeness.
ex: Whey protein isolate is less complete than actual milk... though milk has sugars and enzymes that you may not want to consume.
Yeah I misread your comment. I was thinking just about amino acid profile not fats
They're mostly loaded with non-nutritive sweeteners, not sugar.
Disagree...collegen bars are pretty low on sugar, and they taste awesome. There is no "war on protein".
The establishment guidelines on protein intake for decades (since the 80s) have been very minimalist, only looking to balance nitrogen -- leading to guidelines in the 0.8g/kg range. This is what they're referring to. Yes, it's still hyperbolic. But they're not talking about a relatively recent popularity/marketing swing. The new guidance of 1.2-1.6g/kg is 50-100% higher.
They always need to make up a war on something. Its pretty standard template in American discourse e.g war on Christmas
the current protein hype was litterally in the news today https://www.axios.com/2026/01/07/restaurant-menu-high-protei...
The irony is everyone already seems obsessed with protein these days, which I guess plays nicely with meat lovers / producers. The last thing Americans need is more encouragement on the protein front IMO. Suddenly everyone thinks they're a body builder when it comes to food.
The few friends I've known were attempting ketogenic diets over the years kept focusing on the protein side when the actual diet is supposed to be dominated by fat. They've all experienced kidney problems of one sort or another, surprise surprise!
I mean protein does fill you up faster and better with fewer calories which is good for weight loss or management.
> protein does fill you up faster
You are being pretty fast and loose with your language here so I will alight what I think you are trying to say.
"Fill you up" I must assume means that you are implying the state of feeling "full" or satiated.
There is really only one study in the field of broad food source satiety: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7498104/
Potatoes are the most satiating food at 323% that of white bread.
The second is Ling fish which is a source of protein, but another one of my assumptions is that when you say 'protein' I am doubtful you mean 'ling fish'. So assuming you mean a 2026 American definition of 'protein' you're probably referring to cow flesh (beef) which is only 176% of white bread, almost half of potatoes.
So, in the future I would suggest spreading the word and correcting your comment by saying "I mean potatoes do fill you up faster"
> I mean protein does fill you up faster and better with fewer calories which is good for weight loss or management.
Thank you for exemplifying the problem so clearly - conflating protein with fat when we're really talking about a simple carbohydrates issue of high energy density with negative satiety.
Excess protein is excreted renally, it's easy to overdo and can cause serious problems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_leverage_hypothesis
Protein is actually pretty hard to overdo naturally. If you've ever tried to follow the high protein guidelines and you're a taller or broader shouldered person you'll find that getting that amount of protein requires supplementation or a lot of focus on lean meats. I'm not saying everyone needs to go "high" protein, I'm just saying that worrying about the amount of protein you're eating is probably not worth doing. You'll feel pretty full if you eat a lot of protein.
Keto is not just "high fat" though. Keto is about producing ketones, and going too high fat can actually be counterproductive there, at least for weight loss. (You want to be liberating fat from your storage, not getting it from external sources)
A hypothesis with zero supporting data and primarily argued in a couple pop culture books is not something you should give any weight.
Scientists do not write books when they have actual, meaningful findings.
You've made this claim all over this comment section, so it's pretty frustrating to find it comes from a pretty awful source.
I promise you, it is trivial to overeat protein. Americans love their 16oz steaks, and yet one pound of steak in a single meal is almost certainly "Too much" for a non-athelete diet.
Meanwhile, simply look to every eating competition which uses a meat. There does not seem to be any natural limitation to overconsuming meat.
Not than fat. Fat fills you up fastest, per calorie.
Hmm, how do you figure? Just about every source I can find shows slow burning carbs, fiber, and protein rich foods blow fatty foods out of water in terms of satiety. (if you are using a metric other than satiety to represent "fills you up", feel free to correct me)
UK supermarkets these days have a high protein version of just about every single product on the shelves. It's bizarre, and I'm guessing something to do with more protein being the advice when you're on GLP-1 drugs. The one that makes me laugh the most is "high protein" peanut butter.
Whey used to be a waste product of the dairy industry, now you sprinkle 20gr of it on anything and you can sell the product with a 50% markup as "high protein XYZ"
It's genius really.
Definitely related to GLP-1 drugs. I've seen people on the Mounjaro sub Reddit advising 1g per POUND of weight. Wtaf
The market has clearly moved on, as you've identified, primarily due to bro science. Meanwhile, the medical establishment still thinks protein is going to kill you.
> Protein target: 1.2–1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight per day.
I was amused to see (kilo)grams used for the weights. I'll admit that as an American, I have no idea what my weight is in kilograms. Body weight is something that I always think of in pounds. I do use grams sometimes in food prep, but I think even that makes me a bit of an abnormality around here.
Not that I am complaining about their unit choice. I think American's would do well to be a bit more "bilingual" in our measurement systems. Also, the measurements they give are a lot easier to parse than 3/128 oz per 1lb bodyweight.
Nutrition labels are already in grams. I agree g/lb would be more readable, somebody probably raised their hand though and said "we're mixing system"
More like all the research uses g/kg
There are 2.2lb in 1jg... practically, just cut the amount in half (0.6-0.8g per lb of lean body weight). I say lean body weight as if you are overweight the target isn't the same.
I think it's really slow, but youtube & internet has me hopeful that metric units are coming through slowly, for example for cooking.
In general, this message is good. Particularly interesting from a country which has given the world McDonalds and Coca Cola.
The rise of Ultra Processed Food (UPF) is almost inline with the explosion of waistlines around the world. Not to mention several large scale studies have found clear links between high UPF consumption and cognitive decline, dementia and Alzheimer's. In the West, 60 to 80% of peoples diets are UPF.
What we eat is both a short term (overweight and obese people bunging up the public healthcare system) and long term (elderly people with dementia and Alzheimer's clogging up the social care system) catastrophe.
Generally if it's coming in plastic wrap, you don't recognise stuff in the ingredients, or it has a ridiculously unnatural sounding lifespan, it's UPF.
It's disturbing how penetrative UPF are in the food market. I bought an "Eat Natural" cashew and blueberry with yoghurt coating bar this morning. Of course, very unnaturally it has sunflower lecithin, glucose syrup, palm kernel oil and palm oil vegetable fats, making it technically NOVA class 4 UPF.
Meta comment: The design aesthetic gives me a real "Cards Against Humanity" feel.
It reminds me of this kinetic style informative videos that were once popular, like https://youtu.be/4B2xOvKFFz4
That's what struck me, seems kind of apropos.
On the face of it, this initiative seems like solid nutritional advice. On the other hand, I'm a little dismayed to see animal protein sources given equal billing to vegetable and fruit on their new pyramid, and whole grains placed right at the bottom (below butter!) It's my understanding that people in the developed world already over-consume animal proteins to a large degree.
On the other hand: it's not like anyone ever followed the old food pyramid either. I'm now over here waiting with baited breath for the US federal govt to introduce some kind of regulation around the amount of additional sugar, salt and fats in processed food sold in the US (which makes up a large proportion of what people are eating right now).
The food landscape is complex and multi-factorial. I hope that they follow up with other initiatives to improve nutrition at a population level, like regulation and nutrition programs.
> Whole grains are encouraged. Refined carbohydrates are not. Prioritize fiber-rich whole grains and significantly reduce the consumption of highly processed, refined carbohydrates that displace real nourishment.
I am consternated at the proliferation of refined grains. Here are my USA observations:
IMO it's a no-brainer to eat the healthier stuff that has bran + endosperm intact instead of removing and attempting ton add back the micro-nutrients. (While still missing the fiber)My understanding is that whole grain flour is not very shelf stable, ie. you have to grind it and use it within a few days or starts to taste bad. White flour lasts years.
A small flour mill is not that expensive, I wonder why more places do not grind their own flour?
This website is far too complicated, just show a clear, labeled image of the new pyramid. This is designed to scare people, not inform them.
I don't think they have a visually representative pyramid. The guidelines seem at ends with their half baked image imo
There is a pyramid that you can see entirely only at two precise scroll points, but it’s not labeled with any recommended amounts.
My point is that its a triangle filled from 3 sides; it's not vertically tiered.
Edit: I really set up that conjoined triangle joke
People should look at the actual guidelines, not the flashy website: https://cdn.realfood.gov/Daily%20Serving%20Sizes.pdf
In a 2000 calorie diet, 7-9 servings summed over fruits, vegetables, and grains vs. 6-7 servings summed over protein and dairy. 3-4 servings of protein where a serving is 1 egg or 3 ounces of meat means eating a meatless 2-egg breakfast and maybe a single hamburger patty at lunch and that's pretty much your daily protein.
Hardly some carnivorous revolution.
For a 2000 calorie diet, the previous recommendation was 5.5oz of meat a day [1], the new one is 9-12oz. The new diet gets 18-24g of protein from meat. Meanwhile they are saying on their flashy website that a 160lb person should have 80g of protein, which no doubt will lead people to eat 13 eggs a day instead of 3-4.
Suffice to say, I don't think any American actually followed the old guidelines, and I doubt any will follow this one either.
[1] https://www.dietaryguidelines.gov/sites/default/files/2020-1...
Eat less meat
https://www.mondaycampaigns.org/meatless-monday
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FWWe2U41N8 (no meat)
So, humans lost all of their evolutionary learnings and confused about what to eat. This doesn't happen with any other animal. And humans call themselves as an advanced race of animals. Not knowing what to eat is regress, not progress.
Things went well as long as mind was a servant of the body. Then it became the master and dictator of body. The mind started posing itself as a scientist and started questioning everything that were well-tested over centuries. It came up weird things such proteins, vitamins etc, but it forgot that what mattered was the big picture.
Body suffered silently as it lost it's most critical servant whom it trained over millennia.
It was enough to know that water flows down the slope, apple falls to ground, Sun goes around the Earth and life follows a rythm of seasons. Human life never needed Kepler's laws, relativity, quantum physics, computers, cars or sugar.
It's not too late. Listen to your instincts and body signals. Live on a farm (farm means crops and gardens, not just animals). Eat like your ancestors did. Eat less, eat varied food, more of greens and grains, mostly raw with a bit of cooking or heating.
My sister's cat will eat food until she vomits, and if my sister isn't quick enough with the clean up, the cat will try to eat her own vomit until she vomits again.
The majesty of nature.
If you put me alone in a room with a pallet full of warm fresh Taco Bell fried cinnamon sugar frosting balls, I too will likely involuntarily perform the scarf and barf.
There is something deep in our mammalian systems that never quite shook off the food scarcity thing, I think.
> This doesn't happen with any other animal
That's really not true at all. For example, rabbits love sweet stuff like fruit and will readily kill themselves by eating too much, which causes their delicate hindgut fermenter digestive system to shut down.
Like humans, they simply aren't adapted to conditions where they have unlimited sugary food like fruit, so they will eat too much when given the opportunity.
How is that "like humans"? Rabbits and humans have completely different digestion and physiologies, the former relying on hindgut fermentation. No human has ever died from eating too much fruit, period.
More than once I've seen dogs eat their own shit or shits from other dogs/cats
Anyways, if you pay close attention to how people live in advanced countries you'll notice we do almost everything we can to fuck up our health: bad sleeping schedule, way too much time spend siting, bad eating habits, &c. People half starving in the 1700s on a mediterranean diet were doing better than the average modern american when it comes to health.
That is some serious glorification and misreading of the worst time in human history (the past).
I'm a pretty big fan of the cancer treatments that saved my mother, the emergency medical treatment that saved my wife, the antibiotics that saved my brother. Also, it is -15C outside, and I am very much enjoying central heating.
With that said, I do partly agree with you. I do think that becoming too divorced from the natural world drives a great many ills.
I think the challenge is finding the balance. We sure don't have it now.
> Listen to your instincts and body signals.
Okay, sure, I'll start eating a very sugar-focused diet as that's what my body (via high release of dopamine) tells me is best.
Harvard (https://nutritionsource.hsph.harvard.edu/healthy-eating-plat...) or Canada's (https://food-guide.canada.ca/en/) guides are better.
I'd almost pay attention to the message, but Kennedy has no credibility with me. Giving up 90% of animal protein has made me leaner with vastly lower cholesterol.
This isn't a pyramid?
Also I'm no health expert but this seems like a ton of protein. I'd like to see what a day of this diet looks like
> This isn't a pyramid?
Thank you for saying this. It immediately drove me crazy.
Also came looking for this comment. I get the symbolism of leaving grains at the bottom, but it's dumb.
Just turn the darn thing over. I won't even complain much about having the bottom bulk be "meat, vegetables, and fruit" with just a tiny layer of grains at the top. But this is a funnel, not a pyramid.
It's not even that that bothers me; it's that 5 of the categories occupy the same level, and don't show recommended ratios between them.
I don't think their own science agrees with them either (e.g. red meats)
The big issue I have with this is no kale or oatmeal in the pyramid image. And rice seems to get a bad rank too. How many fat Asians do you see? People diss oatmeal (lames, tbh) cause of “leaky gut” but is that even a real thing? There’s also glyphosates but quaker is nongmo according to the label. Anyway, I see “leaky gut” and I think quack. The pyramid should have more kale, truly.
Are you looking at the wrong website?
I just refer to the official Finnish nutrition guidelines, they seem pretty reasonable.
https://www.ruokavirasto.fi/en/foodstuffs/healthy-diet/nutri...
I liked the Canada food guide.
https://food-guide.canada.ca/en/
Discussion in 2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18985017
Half of the criticisms in here apply 100% to Canada's guide, yet somehow the discussion about Canada back in 2019 doesn't include them.
Gee, I wonder why.
Obesity among Finns is increasing. https://thl.fi/en/-/risk-factors-that-expose-finns-to-chroni...
Coincidentally, MAHA means stomach/tummy/belly in Finnish.
This is the first .gov website I've seen that does not list any sort of agency, branch of government, commission, whatever, that's behind it.
Yes, I see the National Design Studio built it -- but presumably they aren't the ones writing nutritional guidance. Is this FDA? HHS?
Nutritional guidelines are developed by USDA.
This newest iteration appears to have had input from HHS under RFK Jr: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/us-dietary-guidel...
My point really was that it seems odd that this information isn't readily available on the website. Why hide it?
This also appears to be from USDA, as per their other website with the same info: https://www.dietaryguidelines.gov/
s/1.2 to 1.4g of protein per kg of body weight/... lean body weight/
If you're overweight, your protein target should be based on your lean mass, not your excess mass. While you can have more, you're likely better off conserving the calories.
Also, personally, I tend to recommend at least 0.5g fat to 1g protein. This seems to be pretty close to what you get from a lot of healthy protein sources and given that you actually need a certain amount of essential fatty acids for your body to function, I find this helps from digestion, glucose control, satiety and even weight loss.
> Every meal must prioritize high-quality, nutrient-dense protein from both animal and plant sources
Are they saying Real Food™ is incompatible with vegetarianism?
Yes. They probably are, but it's moderately hard to eat a healthy vegetarian diet if you look at what vegetarian athletes actually eat.
… eggs are $6.50/dz at my local grocer, this week. Hand-printed sign on the door apologizing for the shortage. Tyson bought a more local company, and the prices of the product I had bought from the local producer went up like 50%.
We bought a soft drink for holiday game watching — Dr. Pepper with berries or something — and despite a shrink-flated can, it had something like 71% DV of sugar in it. That seemed excessive (and I ended up rate limiting them because of it), but it is frustrating to need to constantly treat the products around me like they're trying to sabotage me.
Move to Europe.
Eggs and meat products are way up in Europe (at least in NL) too, bird flu, government buyouts to reduce nitrogen emissions, etc. Here's a neat page with market prices for eggs: https://www.nieuweoogst.nl/marktprijzen/eieren.
On the other hand, potatoes are down to near zero this year (bullwhip effect, last year there were crop failures and prices were way up so farmers planted more potatoes). Doesn't necessarily translate to consumer prices but nobody considers potatoes to be expensive anyway.
And get a salary that is 1/3 my current with lower purchasing power? No thank you, I'm able to select healthy food from a grocery store.
We have enough americans already
This reads to me as protein first, then veg.
American's don't seem to have a protein restriction problem. Look at your average burger, it is mostly meat, a bit of lettuce, and a bunch of low-quality bread.
I had a "salad" in SF when I was visiting, it was the largest chicken breast I've ever seen, a bunch of bacon and I had to practically go searching for the few leaves of spinach.
Lastly, is it really the guideline that are going to help, or is it accessibility?
I think the effort is valuable, however hard for individuals to act upon to effectively improve their diet.
A simple do / don't list serves this better:
Do: - Do consume more legumes or beans, lentils and peas. - Do consume more fish (low lead options) - Do consume more vegetables and fruit
Don't - Don't consume alcohol or other harmful drugs - Don't consume sweetened items (either added sugars or artificial sweeteners) - Avoid processed food (try to cook as much as possible)
Feel like this is more helpful for 99% of people.
Instead of more meat, eat more eggs. Eggs are as good a protein source as meat, down to the same amino acid groups (unlike other protein sources, like plant-based). People used to worry about cholesterol but that has pretty much been put to rest by now.
I dunno about this. The problem mainly affects low-income families and residents of food deserts, and now the government is trying to put everyone on a keto diet. It just seems like they're not fixing the problems where they happen.
If you’d like a less condensed version of this, I highly recommend reading “In Defense of Food” by Pollan. It covers all the changes in nutritional science and food packaging that have led to the poisoning of the populace by the food industry, and it lays out a set of rules for what to eat and how to eat it in more detail.
Fish, lean beef, chicken, eggs, kefir, milk, cheese, rice, potatoes, EVOO, fruit and vegetables is all you need for peak athletic performance and optimal hormonal profile.
Kefir is amazing! My breakfast is now a Kefir shake with a half a ripe banana (those two work together), handful of frozen quality strawberries or blueberries, scoop of no-sugar added peanut butter and a pinch of salt.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kefir
If you're stateside, you can buy it at Publix and other groceries: https://www.publix.com/pd/lifeway-lifeway-original-plain-kef...
What is EVOO btw?
Extra Virgin Olive Oil... a mono-unsaturated fatty acid blend that's one of the healthier minimally processed oils. Not great for medium to high heat cooking. Avocado oil has a similar nutritional profile and can tolerate a bit higher heat. If you are doing anything resembling frying or higher heat cooking you're likely better off with a more saturated fat option, tallow/lard.
"Eat real food" yet they seem to roll back regulation including but not limited to food safety?
Makes sense to me! And poor diet is probably one of the biggest problems in the United States
Are we going to subsidize a broad array fruits/vegetables instead of corn to the point they become cheaper than processed foods? If not I think many americans will ignore this pyramid and do as they currently do.
Hand in hand with car dependency.
The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics has put out a statement in response: https://www.eatrightpro.org/about-us/who-we-are/public-state...
Diet advice is always way too complex.
For most people ‘stop drinking sugary drinks ever’ would probably make the biggest life change.
And ‘the athletes plate’ would be the runner up bit of advice if you want something simple - half th plate veggies, 1/4 complex carbs, 1/4 unprocessed meat.
If you want to do it with complexity, count your macros.
Agreed. I’m all for the government trying to help by setting/updating guidlines and I actually agree with the guidelines but ultimately any general advice boils down to - eat a balanced diet of whole grains fruits vegetables and meat, and don’t eat so much of it, just enough to feel full. IMO any specifics on what specifically to/to not eat isn’t helpful unless it’s tailored specifically to someone’s lifestyle.
Basically like you said, telling someone to not drink sugary drinks, stop eating out as much as possible and be more active is the only general advice really needed
Cutting sugar is worth trying for many. Even for a few days. You really sense your brain realign on more subtle tastes. And when you finally eat the usual snack or pastry you can feel the sudden overload of sugar (or at least your brain response to it). something you probably never did when sugar intake was high
unprocessed meat? as in taking a bite out of a cow?
My impression is that most nutritional research is just p-hacking on extremely noisy data. The only consistent outcome is that eating too much for an extended period of time is extremely unhealthy, regardless of what you are eating. Unfortunately, this runs contrary to the "more is better" mentality of US consumers who throw a hissy fit if food portions are not gigantic.
For those who are wondering: https://klim.co.nz/fonts/die-grotesk/#information
I think Kris Sowersby is my favorite contemporary typographer.
https://klim.co.nz/collections/untitled/ https://klim.co.nz/collections/tiempos/ https://klim.co.nz/collections/soehne/
It's interesting to see the commentary on processed meat and inverting the pyramid. T
It feels a bit Orwellian in some way - Oceania is always the enemy, Saturated fat was never the enemy.
Meat is ok, I try and consume fish and chicken with the odd bit of beef, but the amount of chemicals that goes into processed meat like sliced ham would make a chemist blush.
I wrote a light hearted blog piece just before the new year on giving up processed meat if anyone is interested:
https://tomaytotomato.com/no-ham-anuary/
Also mandatory South Park clip:
https://youtu.be/fIGXkh6S8Zw
It's fascinating that my new gut reaction to the combination of "health" and ".gov" is now deeply negative.
That was not the case a decade ago.
I always wish they would include a sample menu for one week that hits the daily recommended dose for every vitamin, mineral, fat, etc... without going over some calorie limit.
I really don't like web site designs that take control of things like my mouse wheel. This site isn't just scrolling down, it's advancing the presentation which in most places is moving down.
I question the premise. Why would you ask a government what's healthy to eat? That's a question for your doctor, your community, or medical institutions and universities, people who study that kind of thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthy_diet
Nobody asked them. The people who produce certain types of food paid them to shout loudly about it, because many people are used to paying attention to the government when they make loud noises (due to their ability to imprison you or steal your home or outlaw your profession).
This is entirely top-down totalitarian shit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleichschaltung
> [T]he secret of propaganda [is to] permeate the person it aims to grasp, without his even noticing that he is being permeated. Of course propaganda has a purpose, but the purpose must be concealed with such cleverness and virtuosity that the person on whom this purpose is to be carried out doesn't notice it at all.
Note well that something being true, or false, or rooted in truth or falsehood has no bearing whatsoever on whether or not something is propaganda, or can serve as effective propaganda.
Cardiovascular disease is the NUMBER ONE cause of non-accidental death in adults. It kills almost twice as many as cancer. Recommending high cholesterol foods as staples is grossly irresponsible and will result in millions, perhaps billions of curtailed life-years.
> This is entirely top-down totalitarian shit.
So since the beginning of time when the government introduced the food pyramid, we've been in a totalitarian regime? This entire comment is so over the top I question if it's meant to be satire.
Way too much scroll jacking for me to be honest, probably the worst site I’ve seen of their team, but still for government site not bad
Drives me nuts that people still build these in 2026. Scroll animations should only ever be used to supplement existing scrolling. If scrolling is replaced entirely by an arbitrary animation, there's no longer anything to anchor the action, and basic UX feels broken.
I couldn't finish scrolling to the bottom of this site. The performance is awful and all of the animations are extremely jarring.
Nutrition is important, but this administration's health policy under RFK Jr. is an unmitigated disaster.
Credit where credit is due, going back to whole-foods and single-ingredient foods is the correct decision for everyone, and is often cheaper. But you can tell it's with a heavy focus on meatpacking, and it's known there's heavy lobbying going on.
Is that a bad thing? I'd rather people eat single ingredient foods and foods without labels (fruit, veg) than neon green cereals. I guess my point here is that it's a little sad the 'right' outcome was as a result of heavy lobbying.
The correct order should have been greens > proteins > carbs for an overweight nation.
> For decades we've been misled by guidance that prioritized highly processed food, and are now facing rates of unprecedented chronic disease.
Is this true ? I don't think the blame is to place on the previous guidance but people just you know food engineering and natural laziness, no ?
Anyone know how I can contact https://ndstudio.gov/ ? their talent form is broken
I liked the new guidelines given here [1]. However, I disagree with the protein target recommendation. Feels way too much for a normal healthy adult with reasonable activity.
> Protein target: 1.2–1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight per day.
[1]: https://cdn.realfood.gov/Daily%20Serving%20Sizes.pdf
Agreed, this protein target is high for likely many people.
Results from this meta-analysis [1] says
> protein intakes at amounts greater than ~1.6 g/kg/day do not further contribute RET [resistance exercise training]-induced gains in FFM [fat-free mass].
Said more plainly: if you're working out to gain muscle, anything more than 1.6g/kg/day won't help your muscle gains.
For those curious about why, see Figure 5. Americans also get too much protein already, ~20% more than recommended [2]. There are negative effects from too much protein (~>2g/kg/day) like kidney stones, heart disease, colon cancer [3]. Going back to the 1.2-1.6 g/kg/day range, this can be a good range if you're already working out, so get out there and walk/run/weight lift/swim/bike!
[1]: https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/bjsports/52/6/376.full.pdf
[2]: https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/protein-is-important-but-were-...
[3]: https://www.health.harvard.edu/nutrition/when-it-comes-to-pr...
Protein is way underated for overall health that 1.2-1.6g per kg of body weight (0.54-0.73g per pound) seems about right but its mostly directly related to lean mass. Most people don't realize how much they actually need.
There's a lot of misinformation and stereotypes surrounding protein consumption—often portrayed as something only for bodybuilders and fitness enthusiasts.
But for people aging, people looking for strength, folks looking for reducing fat and feeling more full. Protein is extremely helpful
This understates the vegetable and fruit intake you should have. 3 servings vegetables and 2 fruit is under what you should aim for. 2-4 servings of grains is a lot of grain.
Ideally the bulk of the volume that you eat should be vegetables and fruits. Meat as nutritionally required/when you like it. Meat at every meal/every day is not needed. Grains are a good filler, but vegetables and fruits are king.
I really don't see how this is so different than what nutritionists have said for years. This reads as if the guans before was to drink soda and eat fat free candy all day. The three sentence dietary guidance still holds:
1. Eat food 2. Not too much 3. Mostly plants
Though the government's position seems to be at odds with #3. I would encourage more beans and greens, personally.
There's some inconsistency between the pyramid graphic and the written guideline. For example whole grains are moved to the tip of the pyramid. But the written guidelines say 2-4 servings a day.
The accessbility of this website is deplorable. There is no way anyone responsible for this website has our best interests in mind
What was that animation? It looked like 3 stock images coming together briefly, then flying off again, then the page scrolling.
Regardless, there's nothing here (aside from the odd scrolling layout of the page itself) I can disagree with. I'm already following this "diet" in the most part anyway, and that's without consciously thinking that much about it.
It was a low-budget restating of the message:
- examples of real food
- "coming together", as in being focused on
- zooming away, as in being spread and disseminated widely
It contrasts with the slick, professional look of the rest of the page, showing heart and passion for the message.
Coffee might be bitter and unpleasant at first, but like vegetables, you'll get used to it over time. Don't just seek out what suits your taste. You can't live like an elementary school student, right? Why not try eating vegetables first before judging what's good or bad? I'm not advocating vegetarianism, though.
In a way, "eat real food" functions less as scientific advice and more as a cultural signal. It could be seen as a rejection of industrialized diets and all the complexities around that. The idea of "Eat Real Food" might be a better default when you are hungry and looking for food. I guess time will tell.
What exactly has changed ? And how does it differ say to the Canadian one: https://food-guide.canada.ca/themes/custom/wxtsub_bootstrap/... ?
In reference to this. I just want to tell the case of sugar alcohols and my partner. She used to suffer random intestinal bloating and it tooks us a while to discover the reason.
We were aware of the problems associated with carbs and sugar consumption and we tried to find alternatives so we switched to 0% sugar foods. It turns out that most of them are filled with sweeteners, mostly sugar alcohols, and they have worse consequences.
In fact, anything that you ingest, and it is not absorbed by your digestive system, must go somewhere. Sugar alcohols can be fermented by the gut bacteria causing other kinds of problems. I would say that the best thing to do is to reduce/remove sugar from your diet without trying to find substitutes.
By the way, my partner went to her GP (NHS) and they just dismissed her case by just saying. "Oh, we believe you have IBS". That's it, case close.
Kellanova, formerly known as the Kellogg Company, got the message and are now making Pop-Tarts with extra protein ;)
https://www.poptarts.com/en_US/products/new/pop-tarts-protei...
All the deep state stuff aside, I switched to 100% unprocessed meals for a month sometime ago after finding out I was becoming insulin resistant.
It worked I feel better and a few other things... My eye sight improved and my beard, leg and arm hair increased, noticeably.
What I am missing in this pyramid are brain worms. Brain worms are real food! Don't fall for the ultra-processed glue sniffing practice all scientists wrongly had been recommending you. Have a proudly american-made brain worm instead.
Good God! There's too much scrolling involved. Is this some cunning way to make me exercise?
Carnivore diet from 2022-2024 and now carnivore by day, keto at the dinner table I can't begin to list the health problems that completely disappeared or went into remission for me. Lapse and I'm a ball of misery for three days. Happy to have gone to carni/keto, wish I'd done that twenty years ago. The best time to enjoy my health would have been 20 years ago, the next best time is now. Glad to see this.
And no change in exercise or other levels of physical activity, home life, work life, or other diets attempted, right?
Its awesome that youre feeling better. Its possible, but hard to believe, that its due to nothing but diet changes and if it is, then its hard to imagine that such an extremely specific diet is needed to get the same results.
Why would I trust these recommendations? Much higher quality dietary information is available from much more trustworthy sources than the US government du jour.
Sounds like big government getting into people's lives to me.
Snark aside, american food culture is geared towards people working hard manual jobs, rather than desk work. It was fine in the 70/80/90s when people were still doing that kind of job, but times have changed. If you're burning 2k calories at work, you need a high calorie, high salt meal to replenish what you burnt/sweat out.
I would also gently point out that a "balanced" meal is generally better than a protein heavy meal. It also is highly dependent on your genetic makeup. I am much less sensitive to carbs compared to my Indian friend, My family also doesn't have a history of type 2/1 diabetes.
I'm also not sure how this is going to be balanced with farm subsidies.
Half the pyramid is dairy+meat, that's a pass for me. I do not eat those and my yearly health checks are as boring as a tax seminar on a Friday afternoon.
Think it's telling that all the things shown first and most prominently in their food pyramid just so happen to have massive lobbies. Beef, Egg, Diary & chicken.
Doesn't seem terrible but that already makes me very suspicious of the reliability of this
Fish is also right there. They are all high quality, readily available protein sources. It should not be a surprise that they show up so prominently as a recommendation.
This was literally a South Park episode.
Ref: https://www.southparkstudios.com/video-clips/qcl2i8/south-pa...
The pyramid being upside down with grain on the bottom and fats and oils being on top is directly from south park.
The only difference is that meat, fat, dairy, fruits and vegetables are grouped together with this new pyramid with grains on the bottom. while south park puts fats -> meat and dairy -> fruits and vegetables -> grains as the order.
Hijacking the scroll wheel, even in 2025, is still unbelievably annoying. Please stop.
Scrolling that kills my browser. I suppose the info is only for those who can afford very high end computers and thus also afford to pay for real food?
I love how this is still quite far off from the Harvard Food Pyramid..
But why use one of your best resources for research..
https://nutritionsource.hsph.harvard.edu/healthy-eating-pyra...
Copyright © 2008
When was this web page last updated?
https://nutritionsource.hsph.harvard.edu/healthy-eating-plat...
Actually 2023.
And also 2024. https://nutritionsource.hsph.harvard.edu/2024/01/02/healthy-...
is it really the best resource if it recommends alcohol??
The most important dietary intervention most people need is just eating less. The content of what they eat is secondary. It's not unimportant, it just matters less when you are still wildly overweight.
Eric Topol is a better scientist than you favorite wellness expert. Here he talks about protein: https://erictopol.substack.com/p/our-preoccupation-with-prot...
Go vegan <3
https://youtu.be/fIGXkh6S8Zw?si=QiVtewrkPY85FgQi
South Park predicted it AGAIN
Seems like bog-standard stuff doctors and books have been recommending for decades now. Canada has had a food plate like this [1] for a long time. It's a good step forward but I wonder what the actual implications are. How many people didn't already know this, how much does it change behavior and how will it impact other government programs?
[1] https://food-guide.canada.ca/en/
Yea! Fat and red meat are back in style! And not a smidgen of talk about moderation! Woo-hoo!
This guy is my hero:https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/01/florida-man-eats-diet...
How is milk considered food? Way too sweet for a diet in a rich country.
Are these protein guidelines legit? I’m 200lbs (I’m tall) so they’re recommending 100-150g of protein per day. That feels like a lot…
Definitely. I'm 235lbs atm, and eating 183g of protein a day. It's pretty easy if your lunch/dinner is protein based.
https://help.macrofactorapp.com/en/articles/83-how-much-prot...
if everybody eats the whole foods they can afford, they will be healthier than if they eat an ultra high processed food diet.
The cost of living issue could actually work in favor of those with less money as they can afford less of the unprocessed meat and cheese, and would have to 'settle' for more lentils, frozen vegetables and other incredibly healthy and inexpensive food.
yes, I know the cultural reasons that will make this switch highly unlikely, but that is disconnected from the pyramid.
The popular takeaway from the pyramid will not result in a decrease in the popularity of takeaways, ready meals and other UHP foods.
The polarization of the debate is as unhealthy as the eating habits that desperately need changing.
Whole foods are affordable and healthy. My wife and I eat mostly rice, tofu, lentils (especially red), and vegetables (mostly frozen). We buy in bulk, spend around $350 a month on groceries (while barely eating out), and have a lot of variety through preparing the tofu and lentils in different ways. Our favorites recipes are from Nisha Vora of Rainbow Plant Life and The Vegan Chinese Kitchen.
A WFPB diet is easily the most affordable diet, by far. Much cheaper than meat or even vegetarian diets.
Are they going to subsidize real food also? Maybe help get people access to it?
Or just talk about how good it is while they let people subsist on the most calories they can get for their dollar?
Also - great... another website as "governance". Put out a press release - it's solved!
According to https://cdn.realfood.gov/Daily%20Serving%20Sizes.pdf, their recommendations do not meet their calories goal. Eg, for 2000 calories, you can eat 4 egg, 3 cup of milk, 4 slice of bread, 2 apple and 3 tbsp of oil per day.
Total calories will be 1,608 kcal/day.
It's a very depressing diet menu.
This is exactly what I eat every day and I am phenomenally happy and successful.
Does anyone have a recommendation for a good course to take to learn the basics of nutrition. I've done some very very simple ones from my insurance company for a small incentive but looking for something more serious and rooted in current scientific consensus (which I hear is not always so clear when it comes to nutrition).
Traditionally, the US Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) is actually a policy guidance document and not a marketing or handout document.
Nine pages is laughable and sad. There are entire missing sections on different life stages and transition foods. (edit: I see it now, I scrolled by it because it's way shorter than it usually is) That kind of sensitive guidance on nutrition is supposed to come from this document - which is usually 150+ pages and includes input from committees of registered dietitians.
I'm glad some people are enthusiastic to find nutritional clarity in their lives but I can't imagine this is going to be helpful for the institutions or people that usually rely on it.
Also, please remember this secretary is actively ignoring a measles outbreak, has an obsession with instagram health fads, and is a disgrace to the global scientific community.
Eating real foods (e.g., whole foods rather than highly processed foods) is good advice overall. But replacing mono and poly unsaturated fats with saturated fats is total nonsense. We have thousands of studies spanning decades showing that increased saturated fat consumption leads to elevated LDL-C and elevated LDL-C is causitively associated with higher rates of CVD. There's no reason to replace olive oil with butter and beef tallow.
I processed the Scientific Report Appendices (PDF) through PaperSplain. I'm sharing the analysis here for those interested:
https://papersplain.com/sample/62d71c8ecb6411e042f346088c231...
The only change from the previous dietary recommendations that I can see is that they recommend a bit of a smaller portion of veggies and a bit of a bigger portion of protein. Everything else seems exactly the same.
Am I missing something?
It also seems like the bigger protein portion over veggies is strangely what I would expect from someone on TRT...
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
- Michael Pollan
Well it's a next.js app that's not vulnerable to react2shell, that's at least something they've done right haha
Given that HHS is now run by a nutcase, it’s surprisingly not a completely insane dietary recommendation. I think a sensible person would do OK following those general guidelines.
That said, if you don’t like it, disregard it. No one is forcing you. I think it has too much emphasis on protein but that’s just me.
These guidelines theoretically could influence school lunches. Will it make them worse or better or change nothing? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Does this mean better school lunches? With real salad and meat, not just hamburgers and ketchup. I'd hope so.
I would love to see some evidence for the huge increase in protein on this new pyramid. I'm not challenging it, I'm genuinely curious if there's substantial evidence that a lot of it is actually good for most people.
Shove some letters in there. You ate your way in. You can walk your way out.
Disregarding comments on the proposed diet (as I am not qualified to comment and it all feels relatively like what I have passively absorbed over the past decade anyway):
Why, WHY, does this page act like an Apple marketing page and require so much scrolling??? Thanks. I hate it.
Yeah, I hate the progressive scrolling crap myself too.
How do you build what amounts to a brochure website and send ~10MB+ over the wire?
I am positively blown away by the work National Design Studio is doing for the Federal Government.
Agreed. This is one of the worst mobile sites I’ve used in a while. Blown away (in the sense I’m never coming back).
HN will find anything to complain about. Very on brand of you.
I like the look and brand, but the animations/clickjacking are really jerky for me. Are you not having any issues with that?
So dumb question I guess but which part of that old pyramid is supposed to be prioritising highly processed food?
Makes sense. Now make protein affordable.
The disparity between prices in blue states and red states is bonkers - a 10-15% difference in costs. Under $2.00 per dozen eggs (on sale, ~$3.00 normally, seems to be trending down too?) where I'm at contrasted to $4.00 or higher in big cities. The closer you live to ranches and farms, the cheaper the meat, as well.
If you go to farmers and ranchers directly, source your protein well, make a monthly trip out to the boonies, cross state lines, etc, you can get some serious savings. Hopefully things trend down this year, things have been rough over the last several years.
Ironically, since the pandemic junk foods have gone up in price much higher relative to meat and eggs.
Beef may be crazy prices right now, but chicken is still very cheap and very healthy. Chicken breast here in a moderate HCOL area can be found for around $2.50/lb.
Similarly, we usually buy several Turkeys for the deep freezer when they're on sale, I also find pork close to $1/lb a few times a year. Eggs are usually pretty well priced but I tend to prefer pasture raised.
Mmm.. IMO we have the opposite problem: Meat is too cheap due to subsidies , compared to its environmental and ethical impact.
Soylent Green is people!
Sounds like meat producers may have lobbied for this, fearing the quickly diminishing costs of lab-grown meat, expect lab-grown meat to be labeled “high-processed therefor bad” as soon as it becomes widely available.
Nothing wrong with grains as long as they aren't the processed GM'd ones you find everywhere. Bake wholegrain spelt bread at home and you can make that 70% of your diet no problem. People used to only eat bread before, they were fine
Basically none of this is true.
Grains are way too high in carbohydrates and even whole grains tend not to be complete proteins. Eating little but bread, whether it's wheat or spelt or something else, will malnourish you.
The impacts of health of processed grains is large. The impacts on health of GM'd grains is zero.
I thought I recall from reading a previous 5-year one of these there being much more explicit information on ranges of micro-nutrients one should get (e.g. an explicit recommendation for how much Vitamin C to get). Is there an equivalent somewhere here?
Vegs should be at the top, meat & animal products under. Still an improvement. #1 health tip for poor autists w IBS: Half a bag of frozen vegs in a bowl + splash of water. Microwave 2 min. Stir. Microwave 1 min. Salt. Eat.
Those are great animations. It's amazing what a browser can show.
The actual PDF here: https://cdn.realfood.gov/DGA.pdf once you wade through the atrocious scroll-jacking
One of the dumbest, frustrating things during Obama's Administration was the partisan Republican attack on Michelle Obama's push for healthier school lunches.
Democrats should not reflexive be against this just because they don't like the current president or HHS secetry. Same thing with the restrictions on buying soda and junk food with SNAP.
The supermarket is filled with processed food. Black cat/White cat whatever catches the mouse. The push to eat real food is good. Embrace it even if you don't like people behind it.
Our kids lived the change: school meals went from decently school-made food with lots of variety to prepackaged stuff from a distributor.
The intent was good....perhaps... but the processed food manufacturers made bank.
The current plan, as proposed, isn't even accurate or helpful. It has butter under healthy fats, which it is not. "meat" is thoroughly vague and red meat is very different from fish and poultry. Red meat of all types are filled with saturated fats associated with cvd and ldl-c levels.
It's not scientific and that's exactly what you'd expect out of RFK and MAHA movement.
This is the only good idea that has or probably will come out of this administration, and it’s still flawed:
- Despite folic acid in processed foods causing ADD and other problems in those with MTHFR mutations like me, folic acid does help prevent birth defects.
- The U.S. doesn’t produce, transport, or store sufficient quantities of organic fresh food to feed the entire country, nor would schools all have access to it.
And 100 years from now, will we still call it the New Pyramid? :)
I guess we still call it New York...
There is a similar problem with genomic sequencing - when new twchnologies began to replace traditional Sanger sequencing about twenty years ago, it was (and still is) called "next generation sequencing" (NGS). But the field is still advancing.
And the New Deal
Pretty rich for the administration that deregulated OSHA and massively harmed our ability to ensure food safety to tell people literally anything about food.
I get having issues with RFK and the way the administrations handles health issues surrounding vaccines, but this seems pretty solid.
Is there any evidence that what people actually eat is influenced by government guidelines? I have a hard time imagining someone seeing this and making an actual changing to their life in any way.
It may affect school lunch menus as much of the funding for school lunch programs is guided by the USDA. So, yes, lots of kids' diets may be affected by this during the school year.
Government Orthodoxy is what is taught to your children.
You won't believe or accept the new Orthodoxy.
But your children will.
I worry this will cause people to try to treat their health problems with food instead of trusting the medical system.
I'm so confused. Why would the United States care about people's health? It feels out of character for this administration given the times.
It's a marketing campaign and that's all it is. Zero substance on the website about what they're doing to make sure more people actually eat like this.
"In February 2010, Michelle Obama launched “Let’s Move!” with a wide-ranging plan to curb childhood obesity. The campaign took aim at processed foods, flagged concerns about sugary drinks, and called for children to spend more time playing outside and less time staring at screens. The campaign was roundly skewered by conservatives... But the strategy that Kennedy’s HHS is using to address the problem so far—pressuring food companies to alter their products instead of introducing new regulations—is the same one that Obama relied on, and will likely fall short for the same reason hers did a decade ago."
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2025/09/maha-lets...
Not just pressure. Stoping SNAP benefits from funding these sugar and oil peddlers is a good thing.
The guidelines are good, but to make a real impact, we need a federally funded k-12 breakfast and lunch program that is free for all students.
There are so many things wrong with this website and the underlying arguments, assertions, etc., as others have pointed out, I will simply say that according to https://www.accessibilitychecker.org, the site is not compliant. Which doesn't surprise me in the least, but it is a good reminder that this is not a serious administration.
If only HN would look at this too.
Fantastic. This will set America on a trajectory to prosperity
This is a good reset. I just imagine if this was put out by a Democrat white house, the republicans would be blowing a gasket.
Probably, though the horseshoe thing is real. This is one subject on which my liberal and conservative friends have a lot of overlap.
it's great to recommend these things but if you're poor and live in a food desert, it doesn't address the actual issues that prevent people from eating healthier: money, living in an area where the bodega or wal-mart are your only food options, corporate interests that want us to eat ultra-processed foods, not having the time or ability to cook, and many more I'm sure.
Even questionable quality ground beef is almost always a better option than most carb-centric nutrition sources. It freezes well, transports is broadly available and can usually be ordered for delivery.
Eggs, aside from some of the disease issues are also a very good, nutritionally complete source of protein that are relatively inexpensive.
Another issue is that people have been conditioned to eat/snack all the time... a lot of people have moved towards 2-3 meals a day which is closer to historical norms... have protein be your main source, with vegetables as a side, and maybe bread/pasta at some meals.
There are also beans/legumes if you can tolerate them.
I was roaming around the rural Western US last year.
If I saw that there was a Walmart in town, I perked up. Consistent, low-priced and large number of grocery items. Likely better than an unknown, variable, often poorly stocked local grocery (or worse, groceries at a gas station/convenience store).
I also liked seeing the economic diversity of customers that I wouldn't see at home.
In larger cities, I'll choose other groceries if I can for better selection, if not better prices.
Of course, except for maybe Sprouts, all the places I shop emphasize ultra-processed corporte interests.
I'm not that far from a Walmart in a more upscale neighborhood, I used to use that one for my oil changes. Always interesting seeing a > $100k sports car in a Walmart parking lot (not referring to my car).
Past experience has me asking whether this was drafted with the help of the Real Food Lobby. (I jest, but not all the way.)
When did white flour bread become a whole grain?
There's a picture of a loaf of bread next to the word "whole grains".
I like the title - average food in the US is absolute shit - both in taste and from health perspective. It doesn't even taste like real food most of the time. Just like sugar with some flavour...
I don't get the 'For decades we've been misled' though - what guidance prioritiezed highly processed food ? From the look on both pyramids, they pretty much recommend the same things, in different proportions (more proteins now, less carbs) - but I don't think any reasonable guidance promoted highly processed sweet carbs before.
This page seems to be the most "design-forward" federal .gov website I've ever seen.
Does anyone have other examples?
That animation was laughably bad though you have to admit.
disappointed they didn't do it in times new roman
Is an upside-down Pyramid still a Pyramid?
I thought the analogy was supposed to be a stable (wide) base forms the foundation of your diet.
The message overall doesn’t seem especially controversial. I am personally disappointed on what seems to be a de-emphasizing of healthful plant based sources of protein such as beans and legumes, although nuts do seem to be noted more prominently.
If the message is “eat plenty of protein and fiber” beans and legumes are a great food that has both.
To all the people saying this doesn't go far enough to change things: Of course it doesn't. This is a symbolic beginning, not the whole project.
Things like the composition of school lunches were determined for years by the recommendations that formed the shape of the food pyramid. What gets subsidized with SNAP and WIC was determined for years by the recommendations that formed the shape of the food pyramid.
The depiction of the recommendations does get fixed in people's minds. And then when actual guidelines come out for things that actually matter, like food programs, people expect them to correspond to what they know of the guidelines.
It's not that different from any corporate rebranding announcement. They show you the new direction they want to take the company with new imagery. You don't laugh and roll your eyes and say, "Suuuuure. Show us some new pictures. That'll fix it." You evaluate the direction the imagery says they're trying to go to decide if you think it's an improvement.
So, is eating "real food" like meat, vegetables, and fruit an improvement over a diet based on (especially processed) grains for people's health? Of course it is.
I'm not a fan of this government (or anyone else's, really), but I also think the people who are most likely to take this administration's word for it on something like dietary change are statistically among the people who would most benefit from this kind of dietary change, so I sincerely hope this works, and I'm glad to see they're trying to steer it this way. Even if the damn pyramid is upside down and looks like a funnel.
This has way too much emphasis on meat. Watch Secrets of the Blue Zones on Netflix, and Gamechangers. We can get most of not all our protein from whole plant foods. And plant foods have a ton of phytonutrients that are proven to protect against certain cancerous.
We need to eat real plant food.
The new pyramid looks like a decent step in the right direction, and as other commenters have already mentioned: better definitions of "highly processed" vs "real food" might be helpful (but I think most of us probably have a fairly clear idea of what they mean).
Two more things I think should be considered:
1. Change the Nutrition Facts labels to say "Lipids" instead of "Fats". Seems like no matter how many times "fat doesn't make you fat" is repeated, many people are still scared of consuming fat.
2. Reconsider or recalculate the old 2000 calorie per day guidance. I have no actual data to support this — fitness and nutrition self-experimentation is just a hobby of mine — but I have a feeling that the "Average American" (which may also need to be defined somewhere) probably only needs around 1500 calories per day to maintain a healthy weight. There is obviously a wide range of needs depending on height, activity level, occupation, etc. but I feel like if someone is considering a 500 calorie treat, it would be more helpful if they thought "wow this is 1/3 of my daily calories... maybe I should split it with a friend" instead of "meh this is only 25% of my daily calories <chomp>"
This must be the first good looking government website I have ever seen.
Is there a note about glyphosate here? I don't see it.
This site is flagged for some reason by BitDefender.
Any recommendations for healthy family eating that doesn’t require an hour every day?
Cook very large or numerous portions. Use what you need for 1 meal, freeze the rest to save for future meals. Based on how much your family eats in that first meal, divide up the remaining amount into that sized portions when freezing. Warm up the frozen food in the oven (still may take an hour, but you can do other things during that time).
Frozen vegetables are pretty cheap and easy to warm up quickly in the microwave or an air fryer. They may not be as good for you as fresh produce, but that can be a reasonable tradeoff based on the season and free time.
Chest freezers are reasonably cheap to buy (new or used) and cheap to operate, assuming you have the physical space and an open electrical outlet. They don't consume much electricity, mine uses about 75W for the compressor (when it's running, which is less than 50% of the time) and about 250W for the defrost heaters (which seem to turn on for about 15 minutes roughly once per day.
Yes, batch cooking!
One extra thing to consider is preparing something that can transform easily into many dishes.
We cook a "big meal" every weekend (now in winter time is chickpea+meat stew - "cocido madrileño"). It takes around 1 hour to make, but the time is not proportional to the quantity. So we make enough for 3-4 meals for my family of 3 on a big pot.
The nice thing about this stew in particular is that you can reserve the liquid, meat and chickpeas in separate containers in the fridge. The liquid is a very good base broth for soups (heat up, add some noodles, done in minutes).
The meat can be consumed cold, or can be the meaty base of other things (croquettes). We can also rebuild the dish by adding broth, chickpeas and meat into a plate and microwaving it (again, minutes). Or we can add some rice and have a "paella de cocido" (that takes a bit longer, around 25 minutes).
You have to adapt this idea to whatever is available to you in your area and your personal tastes. Perhaps you can prepare a big batch of mexican food, to eat in tacos/wraps/with salad. Or some curry base that can double up as a soup.
This is so much better. I wish this had been the advice when I was young.
This isn't perfect. It is superb though, compared to previous recommendations. Let's take the wins when we get them. This release is closely aligned with the literature.
Dairy is not healthy fats.
Looks nice. Very wordy and boastful for such a simple message.
The old food pyramid has been taught to school kids for decades—it was entrenched when I was a kid in the 1990s—and that has coincided with a huge increase in obesity in the country over the same period. Dispensing with it is a great step forward.
I don't think the old pyramid was around for decades. According to wikipedia, the "carbs on the bottom" food pyramid was only recommended from 1992 - 2005, or 13 years. Those dates just happen to coincide with the age group of 30-50 year old adults that are over-represented here.
It was replaced with a rainbow-like pyramid in 2005 which completely negated the concept of a pyramid, and then a circle (plate) in 2011.
We need to stop bringing up the food pyramid that everyone already agreed was bad and replaced 20 years ago.
Did anyone buy that food pyramid? I assume people laid attention to it as much as they paid attention to "just say no"
I just learned there is a .gov design studio... la what?
What a brilliant marketing campaign for the Trump administration to look like they're doing something positive.
Yet, I see absolutely nothing on this website to suggest how they are going to change American diets. Do they think these guidelines don't already exist somewhere?
Very interesting, if they indeed are after public health and yet don't talk about organic vs. sprayed produce.
Yeah, I don't feel comfortable with anything this government says for at least the next few years. It doesn't matter how sound the advice is. There is an agenda baked into everything.
Bravo. I never thought I'd live to see the day. The old pyramid was so outdated.
I also feel there's a role that cooking equipment plays in weight loss. I've found that having newer, higher quality non stick pans helps me recognize I don't need to oil my pans with as much butter.
More bro science, doesn't this have issues with plastics?
> The new Pyramid > Protein, Dairy & Healthy Fats
(shows picture of butter)
I'm sorry to say this, but butter, even if delicious, is not a "healthy fat". It's "less unhealthy" than margarine, and perhaps that's what they are going for.
Healthy fats are Olive oil (especially extra virgin), avocado, nuts, seeds and fatty fish.
You can eat what you want, I’m eating real food. Good luck!
What does 1 serving here mean?????????
I own and run a CPG beverage company.
This is a good start. A start. The folks at the top, including RFK Jr. are still captured by big industry.
We need to get off of corn syrup, artificial ingredients, and harmful preservatives.
That said, food deserts still exist, and real whole food is expensive, especially in a time of dire economic stress. I thought that's what subsidies were for, but apparently they are for enriching Big Food / Big Ag executives, their lobbyists, and their bought-and-paid-for congresscritters.
We also need to realize we've been duped for generations into liking things that are overly sweet. Sweet is fine, but we don't need to add stevia or sugar to everything. One of my biggest walls of resistance that I see regularly with my own products is that people have been conditioned to expect that everything in my vertical is super sweet. Just last week I had a parent complain at a sampling that my drink wasn't as sweet as Prime, and thus it's shit. Prime has over an ounce of added sugar in its bottles. I'm marketing to an entirely different set of consumer, too. I offered her a million USD in cash if I could name 10 ingredients on a Prime bottle, and she'd tell me what the ingredient was for, why it helped her son, and the natural origin of the ingredient. She accepted, couldn't get past 1, and then told me that it didn't matter - her son liked what he liked and that's what she was going to buy. We've spoiled generations of people into accepting super sweet things with no idea of why something is or isn't sweet.
One thing I also do is that (i have the luxury of time to do this, which I recognize is something not everyone has) if i want something really sweet and it's not a fruit, I generally make it myself. If I am having a birthday party, I'll make the cake myself. If my nephew wants to leave christmas cookies out for Santa, I'll make them myself. If I want ice cream, I have an ice cream machine and I'll make it myself.
> That said, food deserts still exist, and real whole food is expensive, especially in a time of dire economic stress.
I can still routinely get potatoes in season at 20c/lb, carrots in season at 40c/lb, bananas at 60c/lb, dried legumes at $1/lb or not much more, frozen ground meat in the ballpark of $3/lb, eggs for less than $4/dz (almost as much protein as a pound of fatty meat), boneless skinless chicken breast under $5/lb, butter and cheddar cheese at right about $5/lb, 2% milk at $1.25/L (skim milk powder is a bit more economical if you don't want the milk fat)...
In less healthy options, white flour at 45c/lb, polished white rice less than $1/lb (sometimes as low as 70c), rolled oats at $1.50/lb (though I'm leery about the glyphosate), select dried fruits in the ballpark of $3/lb, bacon at $3.60/lb...
all $CAD, by the way. I converted weights but not currency. Last time I looked at American food prices, you guys had way cheaper meat than us after currency conversion.
> One thing I also do is that (i have the luxury of time to do this, which I recognize is something not everyone has) if i want something really sweet and it's not a fruit, I generally make it myself. If I am having a birthday party, I'll make the cake myself. If my nephew wants to leave christmas cookies out for Santa, I'll make them myself. If I want ice cream, I have an ice cream machine and I'll make it myself.
... Generic sandwich cookies and tea biscuits under $2/lb (though they used to be considerably cheaper)....
I absolutely agree with you about the sweet cravings, though.
Sounds like you like pretty close to or in an urban/metro area.
Food deserts still exist all over the US. And likely in Canada, too - you're less likely to have the same options in Toronto, Vancouver or Montreal as opposed to say, Nunavut or Yukon.
The issue here is that you specified in-season. The problem with food at scale is that humans are impatient, and want what they want regardless of season. We don't have seasonality in this day and age in the US outside of small things like pumpkins or gourds. Fruits are expected to be available year round.
Your food standards are WAY higher than ours (I say this jealously). Your government gives a fuck about its population. Ours does not.
You can get these things year-round here in Toronto, of course, they just tend to go on sale at specific times of year for reasons of supply and demand. But that's specific things like the root vegetables; things imported from the tropics have much more stable prices of course. And really, I'm happy to prep and freeze stuff, and to choose different produce seasonally.
The concept of a "food desert" is wild to me. I routinely walk 3km each way to get groceries and think nothing of it. One of the best ways to make sure I get exercise.
Do American Wal-Mart locations in small towns charge higher prices than ones in major cities in the same state? I think that might actually be illegal here. Certainly the grocery store flyers are for at least the entire province.
>The concept of a "food desert" is wild to me. I routinely walk 3km each way to get groceries and think nothing of it. One of the best ways to make sure I get exercise.
I too do the same. However, I, like you, live in a major metropolitan area filled with millions of people. Walking, or biking a few K or miles to the grocery store isn't unheard of.
>Do American Wal-Mart locations in small towns charge higher prices than ones in major cities in the same state?
To my knowledge, that's also illegal here. The thing is though, food deserts aren't due to proximity to a large city, they are more due to location economics. No offense meant when I say you're thinking about this the wrong way - let's break it down.
Here's the scenario: you're a food importer, bringing in food to Canada. You have 1000 kilos of, let's say, strawberries.
Because import costs are high, you want to make sure all those 1000 kilos sell, and sell quickly because it's fresh produce and it will spoil pretty quickly. You could likely just bring all of them to the GTA, and they'd all sell, because the GTA is nearly 7 million people so there's plenty of demand (and money).
If you really were concerned about sales and proximity concentration, you could extend the GTA area to the entire golden horseshoe, which is roughly 11 million people, all within a few hours drive to the heart of the GTA. Cool, right? You could quickly sell all those strawberries.
Except now you're ignoring Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa, Edmonton, etc. So you have to spread those 1000 kilos around to major metro areas, because that's where demand is. But what are you ignoring here? The very rural parts of the country, because it's harder and more expensive to transport goods there, and there's not as much money because there's little to no economy in extremely rural areas - so certainty of sell-through is not as guaranteed as it is in major cities. I'm talking Nunavut, the northern islands, Yukon territory, etc. It's also extremely hard to model demand from those areas.
So even if you said, ok, I'll send 1 kilo to 1 rural area. Well, you're going to run into trouble because you're not going to have the demand, nor does the locale have any money so even if there was demand (and the economy strong enough for people to be able to spend on your berries), you have to make less money because you're spending more money to transport produce, and as you say - it's illegal to charge different prices depending on location.
So, in a very tight margin business like produce importing, what will you do? You'll ignore the most rural areas, because it's just too risky. And so will your competition, and as well, adjacent business that import other types of foodstuffs that have the same constraints you do.
And BOOM, food deserts are created.
In the USA, there's plenty of people whose closest grocer is an hour away. And because that grocer is in a pretty remote location, there's not many distributors who are willing and able to risk high-cost produce going to that grocer, because there's no economy to justify a higher cost product. So you get nothing but processed junk at those stores, because it doesn't go bad, it doesn't spoil, and can sit on the shelf for months.
It's just hard to imagine. I'm no stranger to the surrounding areas here, either. And I'm accustomed to a world where <10k population towns have competing grocery stores within city limits (and multiple restaurants), and the really rural people are farmers who produce their own food (and occasionally sell e.g. fresh corn at the roadside).
The difference is that you're close to a body of fresh water, and while it's cold as fuck for a good part of the year, there's enough sunlight and arable land around you for either farming or indoor farming to (partially) support the city's food needs. You're also still within an hour or two of a world-class major city with an urban area population close to 10 million people.
Like I said, you go to rural Texas or Wyoming, Yukon or Northern Territories, it ain't easy to grow food - the conditions just aren't there. And you're not exactly close to any urban centers or large farms.
Great. Now let's start replacing fast food places with places that still serve you quickly but serve healthy food. Complete meals of whole foods.
One of the problems with the way we live and work is that it's so easy to go for the quick option. If you're working 60+ hours a week or trying to run a busy household, unhealthy food options are really attractive for you because they're so convenient. People generally know what good food is, it's just that they make the sacrifice because there's other things going on in their lives.
I've said things like this before and people respond like "well, I run my own business and raise a family and volunteer at my church and so on and on... AND cook perfectly healthy meals 3 times a day!" That's awesome for you, you're amazing, but let's get real.
There's a chain here in Phoenix called "Salad and Go" that's pretty awesome... I'd love to see a fast food place that specializes in breakfast items that include keto bread options and low carb bowls all day.
I'll also get plain beef patties or grilled chicken breasts from misc fast food places in a pinch.
Wasn't Panera supposed to be this, before the hyper-caffeinated lemonade scandal at least?
I think this was ( at least in theory ) the goal of the “slop” bowls we’ve seen pop up in the last 15 or so years, chipotle, cava, sweetgreans etc.
This is OK
The website is beautiful, but I'm so tired of landing pages that require me to scroll for eons to see all the content, chunk by chunk. It's aesthetically gorgeous, but painfully impractical.
Its unfortunate the way modern politics has gone. I see this site and am immediately suspicious. What bullshit is there? What ulterior motive should I be concerned about?
Rather than reading it, assuming it was fact based science. Maybe not the best because governments never get things 100%.... but at least able to trust it. Now specifically because this is RFK's MAHA world, I assume everything on this site is a lie.
After reading through it I don't see anything terrible or stupidly over the top. Yes, more proteins and vegetables good, less heavily processed foods.
Why does it have to be another pyramid? Why can't we just use a simple pie chart? With a pie chart, we could compare both calorie ratios and daily ratios much easier.
Pies are too processed.
Red meat is good for you. Animal fat is good for you.
Sugar is the real enemy.
Make Jerkey Without Sugar Again!
Why would I even pay attention to guidelines from a government that wants to make political warfare in everything when the worldwide consensus on healthy diet is the so called Mediterranean Diet?
The world needs less America. Even in food guidelines.
It's a reverse funnel system
Project 2025 was strongly against active travel, yet increased car dependency is one of the main factors in poor health in the USA.
i dont have the expertise to say whether this is good info but its nice to see other folks saying it is. but a government website being one of these scrollbar hacks is atrocious
The "Reducing Saturated Fat Below 10% of Energy and Risk of Coronary Heart Disease" research appendix says they purposely excluded any study before 2010. Why? Also they only included randomized-controlled trials that lowered SFA below 10%. Why 10%?
This Saturated Fat below 10% requirement is a direct contradiction of the earlier requirements to include more meat and whole fat dairy. You can't do both.
To be clear, the research appendix claims their review of RCTs does not support SFA intake correlated with coronary events or mortality, and thus does not recommend reducing saturated fat below 10% of energy.
> Protein target: 1.2–1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight per day.
Since this is an official US government website, are we now officially using metric?
"Better health begins on your plate—not in your medicine cabinet."
This is an extraordinarily dangerous false dichotomy and misrepresentation. This government is killing people.
Beef <= cows <= corn <= fertilizer <= oil. It always circles back to oil.
Backed by Science*
This site is infuriating. The information seems banal and better than the previous pyramid, though flawed.
It is quite stupid to say that the US is sick because of processed food while ignoring poverty, education, and insurance. The messaging should not include that but what can you expect?
'America is sick. The data is clear' With an US obesity rate of what, 40% and horrible health stats overall, not much to argue over. Something should happen.
It's funny how language betrays how people think. Notice how it's always a "war" with these people. "War on motorists", "war on drugs", and "war on protein" now. These people are unable to think about anything doesn't involve conflict of some kind. Even in peacetime, they will find it, somehow.
This is Trump's MAGA diet, a replacement for the lame liberal DEI diet of the Biden administration. Not hyperbole, the web site states all this explicitly if you click through to this link: <https://cdn.realfood.gov/Scientific%20Report.pdf>
The Scientific Report mentions Trump 4 times, so I looked up Trump's diet. Seems he eats a lot of McDonalds takeout and drinks a lot of diet coke. It seems to me that Trump's diet is an exemplary and healthy diet that follows these new recommendations, which prioritizes foods such as beef, oils and animal fat (including full fat dairy) and potatoes. Cheeseburger and fries, and the diet coke avoids added sugar, while promoting hydration. Trump might be prickly about past criticism of his diet; now he can point to these recommendations.
Let's see what the people who want to Make Mumps Great Again are recommending today?
64oz rare porterhouse breakfasts is it.
Neat.
> America is sick. The data is clear.
Can we inform dictionaries and encyclopaedia that data is now a mass noun and it is considered archaic to use data as a plural of datum?
OED records the first usage as a mass noun in 1702, I think the ship's already sailed there
Well it takes some politics to get this kind of culture shift. As long as highly processed food is cheap and working class people are paid what they are paid, there is no chance of anything changing.
Additionnally, it is generally cheaper to eat at a fast food place than to actually cook at home. And since people don’t have time to go back home and cook something for lunch, they just eat at subway’s, domino’s or mc donald’s.
And since this has been going on for more than a generation, today’s grandparents don’t even know how to cook from raw ingredients anymore.
The US is sick, but change doesn’t start with food, it starts with fixing the economic inequality.
If you are of European decent, 80% of your ancestors diet was whole grains.
Tax Fake Food?
The war on protein feels as made up as the war on Christmas…
Terrible website in both usability and conveying information but it looks nice. Info is good, Americans do need to eat healthier and these are good guidelines.
Also was this AI generated because Americans dont know what a Kilogram is and wouldnt use it to measure bodyweight.
Bullying Europe but hoping to live like Europeans.
Couldn't agree more that we should be eating minimally processed food -- our family spends money and time to do just that. I'm glad the gov is promoting it more heavily.
But this statement on the home page of that website is preposterous:
"For decades we've been misled by guidance that prioritized highly processed food,"
What guidance ever suggested eating highly processed food? Other than ads of course, but this implies medical guidance. Doctors, nutritionists etc. have been pushing minimally-processed fruits and veggies and avoiding highly-processed food for decades.
What a horrible attempt to portray this as somehow "new" guidance by a "newly enlightened" leader (aka RFK).
Nice one... so they look like heros for maybe $100k or $1m spent on a website that is like a hackathon showcase. But what action are they taking? Is junk food going to be taxed. Are they making healthy food more affordable?
Drink raw milk, get antibiotic-resistant e. coli, salmonella, and/or listeria.
Cooking is processing. Pasteurization is processing. Not all processing is "bad".
To be consistent with their supposed "values", then they have to end subsidies for field corn, wheat, and soy and subsidize organic produce. That will never happen because these are lifestyle influencers playing bureaucrat when they don't know anything.
We can do away with "pyramids". Canada's food guide for instance is pretty good https://food-guide.canada.ca/en/. Aside from lots of veg, you can balance the rest.
The Americanised diet had a heavy emphasis on refined carbs, added sugar, added fat, and no fibre. Thats a far cry from whole grains and pulses, which have been researched extensively and are thought to be healthy.
Unreadable clunky website.
Also, don't vaccinate your kids against measles.
And if you happen to run over a bear cub, drive it to Manhattan and dump it in Central Park.
Cool, yet another pyramid that people will debate. There a lot of different diets. Try them and judge which ones work best for you based on your goals and which foods are available to you. A lot of people in the United States struggle with caloric restriction i.e. not which foods, but how much.
Looks like a very good effort, shame some people will disagree with it just because it doesn't match their politics.
Clearly, both political parties are incentivized to provide good scientific information, so that their voters will eat healthy food and their opponents will sabotage themselves. (I joke, but I do wonder just how bad the political climate has gotten. Of course, there are several other competing incentives in this, too.)
Not as bad as expected. Healthy fats and whole grains with lots of fruit and vegetables. Emphasis on minimal processing.
It might even be better messaging than the healthy plate because it shows the foods visually which is what some people need to see.
Interesting, this is not bad at all. Maybe the only real issue is prescribing a lot of red meat which categorically isn’t that good for you.
I would love to read something composed of actual text instead of flashy animations and movies.
Good information and pyramid but holy moly that website is awful on desktop with a mouse.
I hate websites that scroll like this. It’s so… clunky.
"We're ending the war on protein"
WTF is this even referring to? literally everyone here is _obsessed_ with their protein intake, regardless of whether they're a meat-eater or not. of all the things America's at war with, protein is definitely not one of them.
A reminder: cardiovascular disease is right up there close to tied with cancer for the #1 killer in non-accidental deaths.
Cholesterol only comes from animals. Non-animal protein sources are much safer and healthier for humans to consume. This website is not science, it's ideology.
But we already knew that's all we could expect from RFK and this administration.
Is there any effort to make real food more affordable for most Americans?
Is there any proof that "much of chronic disease is linked to diet and lifestyle"?
Is our bar so low that we give RFK credit for saying "eat real food" which everyone knows, while cutting vaccination recommendations, defunding public health and making our health care worse? The implication that chronic illness is a "lifestyle" problem is victim blaming, sure you can point to a lot of individual cases where this is the case, but the main issue is access to good, affordable food. I'm convinced the one thing that ties the varied MAGA coalition together is a belief that the problems of modern America are moral failings of the masses. Many of the coalition truly believe it, and the people rigging the system are more than happy to fund them to distract from their looting, just as the sugar industry funded blaming fat for obesity.
I don't like to be this righteous on HN, but RFK wagging his finger about how "diet and lifestyle" causes most chronic disease, which is where 90% healthcare costs go to, just upsets me. If you truly believe that, then who cares if people suffer from chronic disease. Go ahead and gut public health and the CDC, most people with chronic diseases brought it upon themselves! Doctor says "Eat Real Food".
The only hope I have is that he's committed enough to battle lobbyists and introduce more food regulations, like he did with food dye. That's the tough work, against entrenched power structures and real risk. Until then, it's all just talk.
That is one atrocious website. Couldnt get past the second fake-slide, so slow and broken it was
Anyone else disappointed because they didn't show the Swanson Pyramid Of Greatness?
Here's the problem: the Republican government is against almost everything that is proven to improve health outcomes.
They are against transit funding, urbanism, bike lanes, etc, and are pro-automobile and pro-car-dependency. Remember when Republicans literally killed high speed rail in Ohio?
They are essentially anti-city almost as a base concept. See all their political jabs at cities like New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. One of the healthiest states in terms of obesity rates, California, is the party's punching bag.
The party is trying to end ACA subsidies and is against universal healthcare and access to preventative care. How will Americans access dieticians and nutritionists if they can't afford private health insurance?
How will Americans eat real food if Republicans decide to hold food stamps hostage every time there is a budget dispute?
Trump himself is known to be anti-exercise on a personal level. [1]
[1] https://nypost.com/2026/01/01/us-news/president-trump-explai...
companies and special interest groups run your country
Something this does not actually seem to address is that even our “real food” is also polluted with massive glyphosate. And no, it is also something that is a massive problem in Europe, including meat, which does not get as regulated as vegetables and fruits, so levels can often be even higher.
This young woman did an excellent explanation of the overall state of things in a YouTube video, for anyone that wants an intro. https://youtu.be/s64PNMAK92c
RFK is insane about a lot of things but I've been eating roughly like this with a focus on lean protein and fresh produce and I brought myself back from the brink of prediabetes and basically got rid of my sleep apnea. Besides, the last food pyramid was just as worked by industry lobbyists as this one is. That's the problem with tolerating a little bit of corruption: the difference between you and the blatantly corrupt goes from being a difference of kind to merely a difference of degree.
All of this coming while the administration guts science funding, food inspections, vaccine guidelines, handouts to farmers producing nutrient poor foods, corporatist policies creating more food deserts.
thoroughly discredits what they are trying to do, even if there is some good in here.
Good message, shitty website.
> For decades we've been misled by guidance that prioritized highly-processed food
WTF are they talking about?
Food pyramid used to say: "Eat plenty, 6-11 servings of: bread, cereals, pasta".
wow, it's almost like this makes sense
every single gov website is being hijacked for propaganda
one by one
completely untrustworthy
I fully expect weather .gov at some point to be taken over, nothing is sacred with these a-holes
https://404media.co/dhs-is-lying-to-you-about-ice-shooting-a...
impeach them all
Phew! Finally Americans can stop eating according to the old dietary guidelines! Everyone clear out your pantries and fridges and get with the new hotness. Those old guidelines, you see, were the cause of all of the obesity and poor health!
...wait, you mean to tell me extraordinarily few Americans actually listened to guidelines? That this is all performative nonsense?
Honestly, it isn't as ignorant as I expected (although it of course pushes for "whole milk" and other bits of ignorant advice), but it's basically playing on the ignorance of the readers. Americans already eat some of the most amounts of protein worldwide -- yet of course proclaims an imaginary "war on protein" strawman -- yet also are one of the fattest and least healthy countries.
People actually following the prior guidelines in earnest would likely be in great metabolic shape. But Americans don't: They gobble cheeseburgers and drink a dozen cokes and complain that stupid big medicine is trying to con them, while reciting some nonsense a supplement huckster chiropractor told them on YouTube.
Not bad.
I mean, the site runs like ass on my machine and gets the scrolling wrong a lot
But the recommendations are actually pretty good, and I even think the wording and tone is right, and I think it could stick in the minds of modern generations.
It does a good job of not pushing or engaging in any sort of BS conspiracy against seed oil or telling you to eat raw bull testicles or any bullshit.
Though, to be frank, this is what the entire medical establishment has been saying without fail for over 30 years. This was known when we built the original Food Pyramid. We expanded the grains category in it because of grain grower lobbying, and it was known to be not that important, though a grain heavy diet would have been a beneficial recommendation a hundred years ago when America was less wealthy.
The food pyramid shown here was replaced by the Bush Jr admin 20 years ago. Then we had a short lived pyramid that made no suggestions on amounts, and encouraged physical activity, and that was replaced by MyPlate which hilariously puts "dairy" in a glass as if you should regularly drink milk and not otherwise consume dairy.
My one qualm is that 100g per normal sized person of protein per day I think is a bit much, but Americans already do that for diet choice reasons. It really should be more plant food than meat.
But the official medical guidance has been identical for my entire life at least: "Eat a varied and balanced diet, don't over snack, don't drink calories, eat lots of plant fiber, eat basically anything in light moderation, exercise"
Oh sure, the tabloids at the checkout always have some diet fad. It was never supported by science or recommended by the actual field of medical science. Even during the 90s when we supposedly demonized fat, that was primarily diet culture.
The reality is knowing "what is a healthy diet" hasn't been the limiting factor in several generations. People aren't fat because they think chips, soda, and chicken nuggets are healthy for heavens sake.
Geeze that's bad! Can we just show the pyramid and some text?
.gov
Uhm... Skip
War on protein? I don't know of any war on protein, but I do live in a more liberal area than the rest of the country. Considering this is coming from a more conservative government, I wonder what war on protein is going on in conservative areas of the country. Why were conservatives having a war on protein?
FTFY: Eat Real Food -- if you can afford it and have time to.
But I'm sure the Administration will accompany this release with various programs to boost access for the bottom 50% to fresh produce, meat, etc. right?
let me first post a shallow, obligatory complaint about the unreadability of this submission due to egregious scrolljacking.
for those interested without getting angered by weird scroll behavior, see below.
too bad there's such a focus on animal protein/products, which isn't all that good if you want to design a world-wide society of billions of people that's going to last into the next 1000 years. seems like at least half of the pyramid was designed by Big Agro lobbyists. other than that, i guess anything's better than what the average american eats now.
----
Protein, Dairy, & Healthy Fats: We are ending the war on protein. Every meal must prioritize high-quality, nutrient-dense protein from both animal and plant sources, paired with healthy fats from whole foods such as eggs, seafood, meats, full-fat dairy, nuts, seeds, olives, and avocados.
Protein target: 1.2–1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight per day.
Vegetables & Fruits: Vegetables and fruits are essential to real food nutrition. Eat a wide variety of whole, colorful, nutrient-dense vegetables and fruits in their original form, prioritizing freshness and minimal processing.
Vegetables: 3 servings per day. Fruits: 2 servings per day.
Whole Grains: Whole grains are encouraged. Refined carbohydrates are not. Prioritize fiber-rich whole grains and significantly reduce the consumption of highly processed, refined carbohydrates that displace real nourishment.
Target: 2–4 servings per day.
> egregious scrolljacking
Meta but my first reaction was they hired laid off Apple.com developers to build this.
Maybe they're trying to channel the excitement people get from a new iPhone rollout toward healthy foods.
It is so fitting that this particular announcement was built with the worst website style to emerge since the 90’s
War on protein? Why does this comment belong in a recommendation list?
Because the current administration has an overriding focus on self-aggrandizement and the struggle against persecution by hidden forces. All communications and outputs of the administration must pay lip service to said focus, no matter how unprofessional or off-topic such virtue signaling may be.
Because this is the language of the trump administration. Everything needs to be momentus. The good must always be beating an unknown and all powerful enemy
Are you not enjoying the tremendous amount of winning the current usa administration is doing? Can't win big without a nice war or two going on. War is peace, citizen.
To signal validity to the in group constituents and lobbyists.
> too bad there's such a focus on animal protein/products,
Non-animal protein sources (like soy and beans) have very poor bioavailability.
I've heard this claim repeated a lot, in the case of soy "very poor" just doesn't seem supported by the data and more importantly in a real world setting one particular protein source lacking a specific amino acid doesn't matter as much because it is mostly not consumed in isolation.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11171741/
But non-animal proteins bio-accumulate less harmfull stuff (like lead) and contain more useful minerals. I hate doing the "the truth is in the middle" guy, but here, the correct diet is clearly in the middle, no?
i agree that plant proteins usually contain more beneficial minerals than meat, but that also certainly includes lead. whole plants and especially plant-based protein products contain lots of lead, but it's unclear if this is a huge problem
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-91554-z#Sec5 https://www.consumerreports.org/lead/protein-powders-and-sha...
Why does that one particular facet matter the most?
As I understand it diets with modest amounts of animal protein are cheaper, healthier, and ultimately more sustainable for the ecosphere.
Stick with this list and kick the refined carbs, limit even whole grains and no sugar (including most alcohol) and it's actually difficult to be over 15% body fat even if you overeat all the rest (assuming no hormonal issues, that can throw a wrench into things).
Alcohol is neither a carb nor sugar and weight is largely a function of calories in versus calories out. All of the hand-wringing about HFCS and seed oils and deep fried Crisco is misplaced; while these things are all unhealthy in their own way obesity is largely a function of sedentary lifestyles and overeating.
Nobody wants to hear that they're a lazy glutton, however, so pop health media conflates various causes and effects. In other words eating foods with higher satiety and lower macronutrient density and walking more is harder than introducing a new dietary restriction to combat the "monster of the week" - inflammation, microbiome imbalance, etc.
> weight is largely a function of calories in versus calories out
Yes, but calories are much easier to rack up in some foods compared to others. There’s this great exhibit I took my kid to see in a science museum that showed that the number of calories in four twinkies was equivalent to something like 20 pounds of carrots. Not sure if those were the exact numbers (it was a long time ago) but the point is that in the modern world it is virtually impossible to become obese if you are eating even large amounts of, say, baked chicken and steamed veggies. No obese person is overeating healthy foods.
Please don't steam veggies, it turned several generations off of them. But you are correct :)
Steamed veggies are excellent; veggies boiled into oblivion are not!
Yes. As someone who's struggled with weight and finally approaching below 20% body fat as a man, I wish this had come out ten years ago. Nothing helped until I switched to this eating plan. It is impossible to overeat actual meat and veggies. (Note the actual meat part, eating processed meats loaded with carbs is not helpful)
Drink real milk, not the ultra-pasterized shit.
Lol good one. Anything matching .real.\.gov$ can be discarded as BS these days...
Edit:
Actually make that simply .*\.gov$
It's unbelievable to which point this clown show has permanently dismantled US soft power. Guess they think they have enough hard power to compensate. What with all that good raw milk and meat they're eating...
Optimize your diet with my app
https://matiasmorant.github.io/nutrition/
Protein intale seems crazy.
0,9 grams per kg of LEAN weight is more than enough for normal activity.
You don't need to feed the fat any protein as it will only accumulate more fat.
And food produces a third of the emissions of humankind out of which full vegan would obliterate two thirds as in total of 25% of our emissions. Add the land use rewilding effect of 50-100 gigaton and we'd be net neutral with this one change.
Considering the iconic burning Macdonalds video and this recommendation we seem to be doomed.
I'm lovin it.