Political Brouhaha Over RFK Jr’s Upside-Down Dietary Guidelines
and What You Can Do About It
On January 7, Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr announced the new Dietary Guidelines, which set the standard for what Americans should eat for the next five years. Unless, that is, Americans decide to pay attention to the Uncompromised Dietary Guidelines released the same day. Or if the federal government pays heed to the petition brought by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine demanding HHS and USDA “immediately withdraw the recently published Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025–2030.” So why all the political brouhaha over some new food pyramid when Americans have a history of ignoring dietary advice?
The Upside-Down Food Pyramid
Let’s start by taking a look at the new food pyramid. Steak, cheese, whole milk and what looks like ground beef appear prominently in the upper left section. In the written guidelines, beef tallow is also listed as a healthy fat. Yet in the introduction, the Guidelines state “More than 70% of American adults are overweight or obese.” The problem is that while claiming the Guidelines “are restoring common sense, scientific integrity, and accountability to federal food and health policy,” the food pyramid appears to be ignoring 50 years of research showing that red meat, cheese and other foods high in saturated fats contribute to heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.
If all humans ate a healthy diet low in red meat and high in whole grains, nuts, legumes, and fresh vegetables and fruits, we could prevent 10-15 million deaths per year.
For a bit of fun, Sarah Sorscher (of the Center for Science in the Public Interest) has noted that this upside-down pyramid was predated by an inverted food pyramid from a 2014 South Park episode called “Gluten Free Ebola.”
Why Steak and Whole Milk?: Carni-bros and Corruption
So why the focus on beef and whole milk? RFK Jr seems to believe that meat and whole milk are “real” foods and that real foods build strong men. After all, he demonstrated his impressive physique by performing multiple pullups at Washington’s Reagan National Airport. RFK Jr also seems to like protein — the new recommendations increase protein consumption by 50-100%, regardless of the fact that most Americans do not have a problem getting enough protein.
We are putting real food back at the center of the American diet. Real food that nourishes the body. Real food that restores health. Real food that fuels energy and encourages movement and exercise. Real food that builds strength.
US Dietary Guidelines
But these explanations do not explain why beans and lentils — also great sources of protein, low in saturated fats, and “real” foods — do not appear in the food pyramid. Or why another important source of protein — nuts — are near the bottom.
Another explanation is that the emphasis on meat and full fat dairy stems from the industry ties of the people who wrote The Scientific Foundation for The Dietary Guidelines. Of the nine members of the writing committee, seven have ties to the livestock and dairy industry, including three associated with the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and four with ties to national or state dairy associations. Two are associated with Atkins Nutritionals or the Atkins Foundation, which support low-carbohydrate diets.
According to the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine,
“The new Dietary Guidelines reflect the biases of these authors by heavily promoting meat and dairy products, advocating for the use of low-carbohydrate products that align with recommendations by Atkins Nutritionals, and mistakenly warning of false nutrient deficiencies in vegan and vegetarian dietary patterns.”
Backlash
In fact, the strong industry ties are why the Physicians Committee has filed a legal petition against HHS and USDA. According to the petition,
Significant conflicts of interest among the authors of The Scientific Foundation for The Dietary Guidelines, the report upon which the Guidelines are based, have resulted in nutrition recommendations that favor the economic interests of unhealthful food industry associations over the health interests of the general public and put the public at increased risk for cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and birth defects….The agencies must immediately withdraw the recently published Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025–2030 and reissue new Dietary Guidelines that are consistent with the Scientific Report of the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee.
A 2016 law called for any new Dietary Guidelines to prevent chronic disease and for the advisory committee selection process to be transparent, eliminate bias, and include a range of viewpoints. In fact, a committee of scientists was put in place by the Biden administration, which issued its report in late 2025. The RFK Jr-chosen Scientific Foundation authors ignored important recommendations of the Biden scientists. For these reasons, the Physician’s Committee is calling for basing the 2026 Guidelines on the original committee recommendations.
This is in fact what the Center for Biological Diversity and Center for Science in the Public Interest have done in issuing the Uncompromised Dietary Guidelines. The Uncompromised guidelines simply edit the RFK Jr-issued document to reflect the recommendations of the original scientific committee.
Sustainability and the Dietary Guidelines
In addition to emphasizing alternatives to red meat, such as lentils, garbanzo beans and nuts, the Uncompromised guidelines include a section on sustainability.
Prioritize plant-based proteins. Protein intake should come from predominantly plant-based foods, including beans, peas, and lentils, and nuts, seeds, and soy products. If you eat meat, limit intake of red and processed meat. Meat, particularly beef, production has a large environmental impact. Limiting red meat consumption can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, land use, and water consumption.
Obviously whether to include sustainability in dietary guidelines, rather than sticking strictly to nutrition, is up for debate. The pro-argument is that agriculture is responsible for a quarter to a third of global admissions and animal agriculture alone is responsible for a fifth of global emissions. Cows, because of their unique digestive system, emit the strong greenhouse gas methane — and this happens regardless of whether they are raised in factory farms or left to graze in pasture.
The argument for including climate in the Dietary Guidelines is: (1) the guidelines are intended to promote human health, (2) livestock contribute an inordinate amount to the climate crisis, and (3) the climate crisis is degrading human health. Although the largest culprit is unprecedented heat waves, which are responsible for about 1300 deaths annually in the US, there is also a direct connection to food. Greenhouse gases are decreasing the amount of food some farmers can produce and the nutrient value of those crops.
According to the Center for Biological Diversity, more than 70% of dietary guidelines of G20 countries call for limits on red meat consumption, while more than 85% recommend increasing consumption of plant protein foods such as beans, legumes and soy.
Although not focused specifically on the climate crisis, even RFK Jr, before becoming a “carni-bro”, recognized that the meat industry was not great for the environment.
The factory meat industry has polluted thousands of miles of America’s rivers, killed billions of fish, pushed tens of thousands of family farmers off their land, sickened and killed thousands of U.S. citizens, and treated millions of farm animals with unspeakable and unnecessary cruelty. But…the meat barons’ most frightening threat is to American democracy.
Three Things You Can Do
If you believe that humans need to mount a full out campaign to avert the worst of the climate crisis, food is a great place to start. Although I don’t expect HHS and USDA to withdraw their dietary guidelines, and the RFK Jr food pyramid is misleading, the actual text of the guidelines does not go as far in promoting saturated fats as many expected. Perhaps pushback from scientists played a role in RFK Jr moderating his stance. There are things you can do with friends and family to reduce red meat consumption, and to make public officials pay attention to food that is healthy for us and for the planet.
Learn and Share. For a balanced treatment of what the RFK Jr Guidelines get right (reduce processed foods and added sugar) and wrong, you can read this article from the Harvard Chan School of Public Health. You can share this and other articles with friends and family and via social media.
Invite friends over for a healthy plant-based meal. Changing what we eat is hard. But once you try plant-based meals and find some you like, invite friends and family over for a brunch or dinner to enjoy and even cook those dishes with you. People are more likely to change their diet when friends and family show them how, all the while making eating sociable and fun. The Mayo Clinic has good resources about diet and health, including an article on how to start eating a plant-based diet.
Advocate for plant-based diets in your school, work place, and with public officials. The nonprofit Friends of the Earth provides resources to help school districts adopt climate-friendly school meals. You can share these materials with your local school district. You can talk to your workplace or university dining about adopting the Cool Food Pledge to institute more plant-rich meals. Or use the Climate Action Now* platform to send an email advocating for climate friendly procurement to your mayor and city council.
Image from the Climate Action Now app/website. If you register and then click Do It Now! a letter to your public officials appears that you can edit and send.
Thank you for being informed and supporting healthy eating in your home and beyond!
* For readers living in cities over 100,000 residents.
It is amazing to me how people like RFK Jr will abandon principle to obtain political power. Also, although I am not an expert on human evolution, I don’t believe I have heard of any primate species that are carnivores primarily. From my reading, most pre-agricultural societies took advantage of a wide array of plant and animal food sources, depending on their environment.