Eat Real Food

The guidelines are good, but to make a real impact, we need a federally funded k-12 breakfast and lunch program that is free for all students.

Interesting, this is not bad at all. Maybe the only real issue is prescribing a lot of red meat which categorically isn’t that good for you.

I worry this will cause people to try to treat their health problems with food instead of trusting the medical system.

This is a good reset. I just imagine if this was put out by a Democrat white house, the republicans would be blowing a gasket.

There are so many things wrong with this website and the underlying arguments, assertions, etc., as others have pointed out, I will simply say that according to https://www.accessibilitychecker.org, the site is not compliant. Which doesn't surprise me in the least, but it is a good reminder that this is not a serious administration.

Not bad.

I mean, the site runs like ass on my machine and gets the scrolling wrong a lot

But the recommendations are actually pretty good, and I even think the wording and tone is right, and I think it could stick in the minds of modern generations.

It does a good job of not pushing or engaging in any sort of BS conspiracy against seed oil or telling you to eat raw bull testicles or any bullshit.

Though, to be frank, this is what the entire medical establishment has been saying without fail for over 30 years. This was known when we built the original Food Pyramid. We expanded the grains category in it because of grain grower lobbying, and it was known to be not that important, though a grain heavy diet would have been a beneficial recommendation a hundred years ago when America was less wealthy.

The food pyramid shown here was replaced by the Bush Jr admin 20 years ago. Then we had a short lived pyramid that made no suggestions on amounts, and encouraged physical activity, and that was replaced by MyPlate which hilariously puts "dairy" in a glass as if you should regularly drink milk and not otherwise consume dairy.

My one qualm is that 100g per normal sized person of protein per day I think is a bit much, but Americans already do that for diet choice reasons. It really should be more plant food than meat.

But the official medical guidance has been identical for my entire life at least: "Eat a varied and balanced diet, don't over snack, don't drink calories, eat lots of plant fiber, eat basically anything in light moderation, exercise"

Oh sure, the tabloids at the checkout always have some diet fad. It was never supported by science or recommended by the actual field of medical science. Even during the 90s when we supposedly demonized fat, that was primarily diet culture.

The reality is knowing "what is a healthy diet" hasn't been the limiting factor in several generations. People aren't fat because they think chips, soda, and chicken nuggets are healthy for heavens sake.

Looks like a very good effort, shame some people will disagree with it just because it doesn't match their politics.

Past experience has me asking whether this was drafted with the help of the Real Food Lobby. (I jest, but not all the way.)

When did white flour bread become a whole grain?

There's a picture of a loaf of bread next to the word "whole grains".

Shove some letters in there. You ate your way in. You can walk your way out.

Is an upside-down Pyramid still a Pyramid?

I thought the analogy was supposed to be a stable (wide) base forms the foundation of your diet.

This page seems to be the most "design-forward" federal .gov website I've ever seen.

Does anyone have other examples?

Given that HHS is now run by a nutcase, it’s surprisingly not a completely insane dietary recommendation. I think a sensible person would do OK following those general guidelines.

That said, if you don’t like it, disregard it. No one is forcing you. I think it has too much emphasis on protein but that’s just me.

These guidelines theoretically could influence school lunches. Will it make them worse or better or change nothing? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Those are great animations. It's amazing what a browser can show.

In reference to this. I just want to tell the case of sugar alcohols and my partner. She used to suffer random intestinal bloating and it tooks us a while to discover the reason.

We were aware of the problems associated with carbs and sugar consumption and we tried to find alternatives so we switched to 0% sugar foods. It turns out that most of them are filled with sweeteners, mostly sugar alcohols, and they have worse consequences.

In fact, anything that you ingest, and it is not absorbed by your digestive system, must go somewhere. Sugar alcohols can be fermented by the gut bacteria causing other kinds of problems. I would say that the best thing to do is to reduce/remove sugar from your diet without trying to find substitutes.

By the way, my partner went to her GP (NHS) and they just dismissed her case by just saying. "Oh, we believe you have IBS". That's it, case close.

I thought America has fallen and nothing has to be expected then bullshit from the government. And now they want there citizens to eat healthy? Whats next? Asking to use renewables to save the earth?

I like the title - average food in the US is absolute shit - both in taste and from health perspective. It doesn't even taste like real food most of the time. Just like sugar with some flavour...

I don't get the 'For decades we've been misled' though - what guidance prioritiezed highly processed food ? From the look on both pyramids, they pretty much recommend the same things, in different proportions (more proteins now, less carbs) - but I don't think any reasonable guidance promoted highly processed sweet carbs before.

I would love to read something composed of actual text instead of flashy animations and movies.

If you are of European decent, 80% of your ancestors diet was whole grains.

Good information and pyramid but holy moly that website is awful on desktop with a mouse.

The new pyramid looks like a decent step in the right direction, and as other commenters have already mentioned: better definitions of "highly processed" vs "real food" might be helpful (but I think most of us probably have a fairly clear idea of what they mean).

Two more things I think should be considered:

1. Change the Nutrition Facts labels to say "Lipids" instead of "Fats". Seems like no matter how many times "fat doesn't make you fat" is repeated, many people are still scared of consuming fat.

2. Reconsider or recalculate the old 2000 calorie per day guidance. I have no actual data to support this — fitness and nutrition self-experimentation is just a hobby of mine — but I have a feeling that the "Average American" (which may also need to be defined somewhere) probably only needs around 1500 calories per day to maintain a healthy weight. There is obviously a wide range of needs depending on height, activity level, occupation, etc. but I feel like if someone is considering a 500 calorie treat, it would be more helpful if they thought "wow this is 1/3 of my daily calories... maybe I should split it with a friend" instead of "meh this is only 25% of my daily calories <chomp>"

Any recommendations for healthy family eating that doesn’t require an hour every day?

To all the people saying this doesn't go far enough to change things: Of course it doesn't. This is a symbolic beginning, not the whole project.

Things like the composition of school lunches were determined for years by the recommendations that formed the shape of the food pyramid. What gets subsidized with SNAP and WIC was determined for years by the recommendations that formed the shape of the food pyramid.

The depiction of the recommendations does get fixed in people's minds. And then when actual guidelines come out for things that actually matter, like food programs, people expect them to correspond to what they know of the guidelines.

It's not that different from any corporate rebranding announcement. They show you the new direction they want to take the company with new imagery. You don't laugh and roll your eyes and say, "Suuuuure. Show us some new pictures. That'll fix it." You evaluate the direction the imagery says they're trying to go to decide if you think it's an improvement.

So, is eating "real food" like meat, vegetables, and fruit an improvement over a diet based on (especially processed) grains for people's health? Of course it is.

I'm not a fan of this government (or anyone else's, really), but I also think the people who are most likely to take this administration's word for it on something like dietary change are statistically among the people who would most benefit from this kind of dietary change, so I sincerely hope this works, and I'm glad to see they're trying to steer it this way. Even if the damn pyramid is upside down and looks like a funnel.

This has way too much emphasis on meat. Watch Secrets of the Blue Zones on Netflix, and Gamechangers. We can get most of not all our protein from whole plant foods. And plant foods have a ton of phytonutrients that are proven to protect against certain cancerous.

We need to eat real plant food.

This must be the first good looking government website I have ever seen.

This is so much better. I wish this had been the advice when I was young.

Dairy is not healthy fats.

Phew! Finally Americans can stop eating according to the old dietary guidelines! Everyone clear out your pantries and fridges and get with the new hotness. Those old guidelines, you see, were the cause of all of the obesity and poor health!

...wait, you mean to tell me extraordinarily few Americans actually listened to guidelines? That this is all performative nonsense?

Honestly, it isn't as ignorant as I expected (although it of course pushes for "whole milk" and other bits of ignorant advice), but it's basically playing on the ignorance of the readers. Americans already eat some of the most amounts of protein worldwide -- yet of course proclaims an imaginary "war on protein" strawman -- yet also are one of the fattest and least healthy countries.

People actually following the prior guidelines in earnest would likely be in great metabolic shape. But Americans don't: They gobble cheeseburgers and drink a dozen cokes and complain that stupid big medicine is trying to con them, while reciting some nonsense a supplement huckster chiropractor told them on YouTube.

The message overall doesn’t seem especially controversial. I am personally disappointed on what seems to be a de-emphasizing of healthful plant based sources of protein such as beans and legumes, although nuts do seem to be noted more prominently.

If the message is “eat plenty of protein and fiber” beans and legumes are a great food that has both.

Is there a note about glyphosate here? I don't see it.

The old food pyramid has been taught to school kids for decades—it was entrenched when I was a kid in the 1990s—and that has coincided with a huge increase in obesity in the country over the same period. Dispensing with it is a great step forward.

Looks nice. Very wordy and boastful for such a simple message.

This site is flagged for some reason by BitDefender.

I just learned there is a .gov design studio... la what?

All of this coming while the administration guts science funding, food inspections, vaccine guidelines, handouts to farmers producing nutrient poor foods, corporatist policies creating more food deserts.

thoroughly discredits what they are trying to do, even if there is some good in here.

What a brilliant marketing campaign for the Trump administration to look like they're doing something positive.

Yet, I see absolutely nothing on this website to suggest how they are going to change American diets. Do they think these guidelines don't already exist somewhere?

I also feel there's a role that cooking equipment plays in weight loss. I've found that having newer, higher quality non stick pans helps me recognize I don't need to oil my pans with as much butter.

Yeah, I don't feel comfortable with anything this government says for at least the next few years. It doesn't matter how sound the advice is. There is an agenda baked into everything.

Great. Now let's start replacing fast food places with places that still serve you quickly but serve healthy food. Complete meals of whole foods.

One of the problems with the way we live and work is that it's so easy to go for the quick option. If you're working 60+ hours a week or trying to run a busy household, unhealthy food options are really attractive for you because they're so convenient. People generally know what good food is, it's just that they make the sacrifice because there's other things going on in their lives.

I've said things like this before and people respond like "well, I run my own business and raise a family and volunteer at my church and so on and on... AND cook perfectly healthy meals 3 times a day!" That's awesome for you, you're amazing, but let's get real.

I own and run a CPG beverage company.

This is a good start. A start. The folks at the top, including RFK Jr. are still captured by big industry.

We need to get off of corn syrup, artificial ingredients, and harmful preservatives.

That said, food deserts still exist, and real whole food is expensive, especially in a time of dire economic stress. I thought that's what subsidies were for, but apparently they are for enriching Big Food / Big Ag executives, their lobbyists, and their bought-and-paid-for congresscritters.

We also need to realize we've been duped for generations into liking things that are overly sweet. Sweet is fine, but we don't need to add stevia or sugar to everything. One of my biggest walls of resistance that I see regularly with my own products is that people have been conditioned to expect that everything in my vertical is super sweet. Just last week I had a parent complain at a sampling that my drink wasn't as sweet as Prime, and thus it's shit. Prime has over an ounce of added sugar in its bottles. I'm marketing to an entirely different set of consumer, too. I offered her a million USD in cash if I could name 10 ingredients on a Prime bottle, and she'd tell me what the ingredient was for, why it helped her son, and the natural origin of the ingredient. She accepted, couldn't get past 1, and then told me that it didn't matter - her son liked what he liked and that's what she was going to buy. We've spoiled generations of people into accepting super sweet things with no idea of why something is or isn't sweet.

One thing I also do is that (i have the luxury of time to do this, which I recognize is something not everyone has) if i want something really sweet and it's not a fruit, I generally make it myself. If I am having a birthday party, I'll make the cake myself. If my nephew wants to leave christmas cookies out for Santa, I'll make them myself. If I want ice cream, I have an ice cream machine and I'll make it myself.

Why does it have to be another pyramid? Why can't we just use a simple pie chart? With a pie chart, we could compare both calorie ratios and daily ratios much easier.

What does 1 serving here mean?????????

Very interesting, if they indeed are after public health and yet don't talk about organic vs. sprayed produce.

Its unfortunate the way modern politics has gone. I see this site and am immediately suspicious. What bullshit is there? What ulterior motive should I be concerned about?

Rather than reading it, assuming it was fact based science. Maybe not the best because governments never get things 100%.... but at least able to trust it. Now specifically because this is RFK's MAHA world, I assume everything on this site is a lie.

After reading through it I don't see anything terrible or stupidly over the top. Yes, more proteins and vegetables good, less heavily processed foods.

The website is beautiful, but I'm so tired of landing pages that require me to scroll for eons to see all the content, chunk by chunk. It's aesthetically gorgeous, but painfully impractical.

It's a reverse funnel system

Make Jerkey Without Sugar Again!