My Thoughts on the New Food Pyramid

If you pay attention to the news, you’ve probably seen stories about the federal government’s new eating recommendations, Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025-2030. Visually, they’ve taken the traditional food pyramid, smaller at the top, and turned it upside-down.

When I first saw the new pyramid model, I thought it looked wacky. That’s because so many wacky things are coming down from the feds these days when it comes to things like immunizations, Tylenol supposedly causing autism, and other nonscientific stuff out there.

But the more I read about these new recommendations — and learned the American Medical Association had endorsed them — I realized I had to delve into this more.

As we all know, we are too overweight. Since the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s original Food Guide Pyramid came out years ago, with 100 pages of guidelines, we’ve gained weight, had more diabetes and become a flabbier society. So maybe those guidelines weren’t quite right.

When I was a kid, dietary guidelines consisted of the Basic Four Food Groups to be consumed every day: milk, meat, fruits and vegetables, and breads and cereals (enriched with B vitamins). Then in 1992, the USDA developed the original Food Guide Pyramid, with the emphasis on consuming less oil, fat and sweets.

In 2011, the recommendations morphed into the USDA’s MyPlate guidelines, a circular design meant to show what we should have on our plates.

Now, close your eyes for a moment and see if you can envision the original Food Guide Pyramid or the MyPlate recommendations. If so, draw them on paper, then Google it to see how close you are. If you can see these perfectly, you are better than me. I mention this because the guidelines only do so much.

But back to the new recommendations and what, if anything is good about them. In fact, there is some good stuff that I agree with, as does the AMA and the American Society of Pediatrics.

Whole foods not created foods. How much have I written on this over the years? Lots and lots. Industrialized foods, not just Twinkies and Cheetos but a whole lot of other things, have taken over our society. For example, 500 million people eat at one of McDonald’s 40,000 locations every week.

In Wisconsin, 900,000 people visit Taco Bell every week, with the Crunchwrap Supreme being their best-selling item. What’s in there is a trade secret, but as reported previously in the New Yorker magazine, it’s a great example of how the Industrial Food Complex has made us fat.

Emphasizing whole foods over created foods is an obvious step in the right direction — and a big one, at that.

Early allergen exposure. We were wrong to limit peanut products early in life; it turned out this approach only produced more peanut allergies. Same for other common food allergens. Overall, about 8% of kids in the U.S. now have food allergies.

As I’m always saying, science has fits and starts, and the approach of limiting food allergens was a boo-boo. So early introduction of peanuts, wheat, eggs, shellfish and fish for babies at around 6 months of age is a great idea.

Full-fat dairy. This will raise eyebrows. We always had 2% milk in the house — I just can’t bring myself to drink skim milk, and 1% is folly. But, as I recently wrote, there is no association with full-fat dairy and obesity.

Don’t drink too much, but enjoy what you have. I love full-fat yogurt because it’s creamy and good. I just eat less of it.

And that may be the issue here, finding satisfaction with what you eat. If you don’t really like what you eat, you just might be eating more.

More protein. I’m all-in on this, and it’s a trend. I think as an older adult (and I am getting up there, at 78), I don’t get enough protein. I have a 30-gram protein shake every day, starting in the morning, to supplement my protein intake.

If you weigh 180 pounds, you need 70 grams of protein a day. I’ve Googled the nutrition information for what I eat and found I often don’t get to that number.

I don’t recommend you get all of this from eggs. The powders and drinks do have their place, with the protein there coming from whey, casein, albumen from eggs, or plant sources such as soy.

No added sugar for kids. We have to look at all the packaged stuff we get. If sugar is listed up front, nix it. Breakfast cereal is notorious for this. The sweeter you make things in your diet, the more you want sweets. Excess sugar in young kids leads to health problems when they’re older.

The new guidelines say no cookies or cake until kids are 10. OK, are you kidding? That is a ridiculous thing to suggest since no one, except maybe the Puritans in our society, will follow that. But do work hard to limit sugar for kids.

And then the weird stuff. Here’s where the guidelines get a little wacky — like cook with beef fat. Where would I buy that anyway?

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the man largely behind the new dietary guidelines, is enamored with eating lots and lots of beef and beef products. He hasn’t realized that chicken, which is a better animal protein source, has taken over from beef. I disagree with him on beef and think it’s still important to limit the saturated fats. These guidelines seem to be mute on that.

My spin: We’ll see what actually changes in society with these guidelines. They are used for childhood nutrition programs and other federal programs that have food subsidies. Bottom line is there are some good things in this — perhaps surprisingly, given what else has been out there from the feds of late. Stay well.