Eat Real Food

> 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.

> 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".

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.

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.

> 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"

I don't believe that's true with 100% grass fed beef

Thanks for the interesting perspective! I'm curious, is the metallic tang because of iron content or somethig else?

> because otherwise the beef would be unpalatable

[citation needed]

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.

> 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.

> 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 ?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

That trite comment is intellectual dishonesty set to 11.

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.

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.

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.

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?

A broken clock is right twice a day. Doesn't mean it's not broken.

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

They also received financial aid depending on the land surface they have (at least in Europe)

1g/lb is in fact a popular target among bodybuilders.

Much research indicates 0.5 to 0.7 g/lb provides most of the benefits, with continuing but diminishing gains above 0.7 g/lb. And the benefit is not just for "body building", but also for minimizing muscle loss during weight loss and improving insulin sensitivity. Other research indicates we may benefit from higher levels as we age.

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

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.

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.

Better than the old one in what way?

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

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 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.

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.

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..."

[dead]

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.

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)

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?

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...

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.

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!

> And to find out that's average???

I think you’re conflating 200g of protein with 200g of meat that has protein.

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.

Cheese is probably there due to lobbying. I don’t understand why it would be that high.

Bodybuilder? Powerlifter? Curious what specifically you mean that requires you to bulk vs. cut

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

90g of protein, what is recommended for me, is like 4 hamburgers or a 16oz steak per day ...

People are more wasteful now (in times of relative plenty generally) too though, at least I'm sure that's true in the UK.

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.)

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.

> 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.

>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?

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).

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.

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.

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

> Cattle outweighs the total livestock on this planet by a 10 to 1 factor.

It seems odd not to include cattle in total livestock.

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.

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)

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.

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?

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.

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.

+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.

Sounds farfetched. Especially if restriction is on candy and sodas

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

the reason it's being _changed_ is obviously partisan politics.

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.

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.

Is pretty clear that eating cholesterol doesn't lead to higher blood cholesterol. It just doesn't matter.

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.

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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.

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.

What corporate interests are pushing against a meat centric diet that have any actual traction or power in the USA?

The bro science would tell you the protein target is still too low too :)

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.

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.

And what does it say about traditional governance that it takes a someone like RFK to actually do anything about it.

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.

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.

it's a terrible design and i can't believe they've done this to the american people

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

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.

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.

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 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.

RFK is a pretty fit, healthy guy. Whatever he believes is certainly working.

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.

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.

I do not think there is room for anti-vaxxers on this site.

Evidence please.

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"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.

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.

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.

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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.

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.

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.

Staunch anti-vaccine, and he's tearing apart the CDC wit regards to the same.

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...but you just made the argument that corrupted sources can be, on occasion, correct.

This... is so silly.

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.

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"

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 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.

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.

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

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.

I believe you’re missing their point. As well as demonstrating a complete lack of information about infant formula.

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.

> 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.

> Beef has ~3x more protein per gram than legumes

   - Chicken: 27/100g
   - Beef: 31g/100g
   - Hemp: 32g/100g
   - Pumpkin: 33g/100g
   - Soy: 36g/100g
   - Seitan: 75g/100g

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.

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.

> 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...

> 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

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.

> 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.

Big Broccoli need to step up.

Big Broccoli even rolls off the tongue, time to start it!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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".

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

Except for the incredibly wrong and bad advice that Americans, who already eat too much meat, should eat even more meat, sure.

Anything with money amounts, my next question is how much money were we previously spending on that thing.

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.

> 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.

> 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.

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.

survey based study, correlation is not causation, and correlated affects not separable from other biases.

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.

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.

How can be something simple as bread be ultra processed? We can prepare it at home.

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.

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.

How are you going to infer what's harmful if you're only going to research healthy people?

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."

You know that character is a joke, right?

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.

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.

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".

I mean protein does fill you up faster and better with fewer calories which is good for weight loss or management.

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

> On the flip side, I firmly believe a lot of the issues that we are having societally with regards to hormone imbalance, mental health and fertility issues really comes down to insufficient intake of essential fatty acids which include some saturated fats.

Why werent those issues in the late 19th century? We certainly ate very, very little meat and didn't have any fertility issues.

I'm saying that, but even nowadays, the countries with the highest fertility are those where people eat the less meat.

There are an incredible amount of contaminants and disruptions in today's society. There are far too many possible causes for us to be sure, without process of elimination, that lack of fat of all things is the central cause of the problems you have listed.

Also, I'm not sure if a vegan hurt you or something, but yes in fact there are many of us who believe today's meat farming industry is nothing short of barbaric and extremely damaging to the environment. But believe it or not, most vegans understand protein better than the average person, and make sure to get fats and complete proteins from a variety of sources which don't require industrial-scale torture of helpless animals.

Americans eat more meat and especially more red meat than most other people on the planet. Why aren't we killing it on hormone balance, mental health, and fertility?

There is A LOT of evidence that diets high in saturated fats cause heart disease and the whole plethora of metabolic diseases that go with it. It's basically undeniable that red meat is just, like, bad for you.

Not to mention processed red meats are in the same classification of carcinogen as alcohol and Tabacoo. And regular red meat is still higher up than aspartame, aka diet coke.

Meat can be good for you. But it shouldn't take a genius to deduce that a diet of steaks, cheeseburgers, milkshakes, and bacon probably is not.

if veganism was a real problem we'd have it made, that's the least of our worries... americans aren't dying at an alarming rate from heart disease because they've been lead astray from vegans

there's been little change in overall meat consumption in the US for decades... and it's actually higher than most places in the world

> I think that veganism and the Seventh Day Adventist church has done a lot of harm to health and nutrition over the years

This is your bubble, get off twitter.

More like all the research uses g/kg

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There is a pyramid that you can see entirely only at two precise scroll points, but it’s not labeled with any recommended amounts.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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/

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