RFK Jr.’s New Dietary Guidelines Are Out, and They’re Full of Red Meat

After multiple delays, the Trump administration finally released the latest version of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans on Wednesday. The document advises Americans to eat more red meat and dairy, cautions against added sugars and ultraprocessed foods and flips the food pyramid on its head.

The dietary guidelines are written and released every five years by the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture. The document guides many of the government’s most significant food programs. School lunch offerings, and the foods available for purchase with SNAP benefits, must adhere to its recommendations. All in all, the dietary guidelines influence over $40 billion in federal spending annually.

The most recent dietary guidelines advisory panel recommended prioritizing plant-based proteins over animal-based ones, based on two years of reviewing the latest research. However, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. nixed this idea.

The new guidelines are already drawing criticism.

“These guidelines take us back to the diets of the 1950s when everyone was eating lots of meat and dairy and not worrying much about vegetables, and heart disease was rampant,” Marion Nestle, an emerita professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University who served on the advisory panel in the 1990s, wrote on her blog Food Politics. “I’m all for eating whole foods, but these guidelines dismiss 75 years of research favoring diets higher in plant foods.”

A Meaty Update

Some clues already existed regarding what the guidelines would look like. Kennedy said last year that the administration would be disregarding the advisory panel’s research-based suggestions and crafting the guidelines from the ground up. He made clear that the new version would focus on the supposed dangers of ultraprocessed foods, a pet issue of his; in truth, the health properties of ultraprocessed foods aren’t black-and-white, as some ultraprocessed foods, such as whole-grain grocery store bread, are perfectly nutritious.

The new guidelines place heavy emphasis on protein, with the official website going so far as to proclaim that the administration is “ending the war on protein.” It’s unclear what this is a reference to. Sentient has reached out to the USDA and HHS for clarification on this and other questions. Neither agency has responded.

While the previous version of the document endorsed low-fat dairy and lean meats such as poultry and fish, this newest update advises Americans to eat red meat and full-fat dairy. Eating more red meat has been linked to a higher risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and premature death. Though the document emphasizes animal protein, it does also say that “every meal must prioritize high-quality, nutrient-dense protein from both animal and plant sources.” This guideline seems to be in contradiction with the new visual.

Like previous versions, the document advises limiting saturated fat to 10% of daily calories — but at the same time it recommends eating more full-fat dairy and red meat. As Nestle points out, this creates a contradiction. Full-fat dairy is high in saturated fat, and the majority of fat in red meat is saturated.

“If you increase the amount of protein, meat, and full-fat dairy in your diet, you will not be able to keep your saturated fat intake below 10% of calories, and will have a harder time maintaining calorie balance,” Nestle wrote in her blog. 

As with previous versions of the guidelines, the latest update gives dairy its own category separate from the protein category, although dairy contains significant protein, and advises Americans to consume three servings of dairy per day.

Upside Down

Visually, the new guidelines have scrapped MyPlate, which was introduced in 2011 to be a clear and simple guide to which quantities of different food groups to eat. Instead, they return to the food pyramid — but flipped upside down.

“We are reclaiming the food pyramid and returning it to its true purpose of educating and nourishing all Americans,” the document boasts, though the food pyramid was in fact originally designed for Swedish consumers.

The inverted food pyramid starts at the top left with pictures of a steak, cheese, chicken and vegetables, apparently indicating that these foods are good to consume in large quantities. In the middle, butter, grapes and nuts are placed at the same level. Whole grains are at the bottom, visually communicating that Americans should eat less of them than other foods, even though the guidelines themselves recommend eating 2–4 servings of whole grain per day.

While the old pyramid contained six categories of food, the new one includes only three: “proteins, dairy, and healthy fats,” “vegetables and fruits” and “whole grains.” Unlike the old version, the inverted pyramid graphic doesn’t list specific serving sizes.

Federal law requires the government to update the guidelines every five years, but the administration blew through several self-imposed deadlines while crafting them, and ultimately missed the legal deadline for their release.