US health department’s new food pyramid places red meat and cheese high in saturated fats over plant-based proteins
The new food pyramid rolled out in US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) places animal-based proteins, including cheese and red meats high in saturated fats, above plant-based proteins, which has raised alarm bells among health and environmental experts.
This rejiggered food pyramid is in line with Kennedy’s previous signals that he will recommend increasing saturated fat in US diets as part of the “Make America healthy again” movement.
Dr Cheryl Anderson, an American Heart Association board member and professor at the University of California San Diego, said she was eager to read the new guidelines because “they came out much later than they were supposed to. Typically, the guidelines are released within six months of the secretaries receiving the dietary guidelines advisory committee’s report,” which should have meant they were released over the summer.
Anderson said she was pleased to see that some things appeared to be in line with the DGA committee’s report, including an emphasis on eating “real food”, decreasing the amount of processed food in the diet, and decreasing added sugars. But she “grew concerned” when she saw the visual of the food pyramid with images of steak and cheese higher, larger and overall much more prominent than images of plant-based proteins like nuts. This visual contradicts the written guidelines on saturated fats.
