RFK Jr’s New Food Pyramid Is Industry-Approved
The report behind Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s updated dietary guidelines didn’t eliminate food and pharmaceutical industry influence over Health and Human Services decisions. It did the exact opposite.
The Trump administration’s updated dietary guidelines are adulterated with corporate conflicts and questionable science. (Will Oliver / EPA / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Last Spring, US Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr summarily dismissed the expert-advised study intended to inform changes to the nation’s nutritional guidelines, claiming it was dominated by scientists with ties to the food and pharmaceutical industries.
He then commissioned a new report justifying the new dietary guidelines released last week. The report’s nine scientific reviewers included six with financial ties to food companies and the beef and milk industries’ trade groups. The updated guidelines put high-protein diets based on meat and milk atop the food pyramid, despite Americans already overconsuming those protein sources based on previous guidelines.
The ninety-page report, titled “The Scientific Foundation for the Dietary Guidelines for Americans,” listed Christopher Ramsden from the National Institute on Aging as its primary author. According to the report, Ramsden received “input and revisions” from unnamed persons at the US Department of Health and Human Services and the US Department of Agriculture.
The report also listed the names of its nine-member scientific review panel, along with their financial conflict-of-interest disclosure statements. The information fulfills, at least in this one instance, RFK Jr’s promise that his administration would be radically transparent about its decision-making process.
But the conflicts of interest, first reported by health care publication StatNews, make a mockery of his promise to eliminate industry influence over agency decisions. Two-thirds of the reviewers had financial relationships within the past three years with corporate entities that had a direct stake in the outcome of the guidelines. Several had ties to the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and the National Dairy Council.
There is no evidence that the new committee members received the legally required vetting for conflicts of interest under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) of 1972. FACA prohibits advisers with conflicts of interest from serving on federal advisory committees unless they have officially received a waiver declaring their expertise essential and unavailable from other, nonconflicted sources. The General Services Administration’s FACA committee database, which tracks federal advisory committees and membership conflicts of interest waivers, is currently “not operational.”
For the record, here are the names, affiliations, and financial ties of those six scientific reviewers:
— Thomas Brenna, Dell Pediatric Research Institute, University of Texas at Austin: Received financial support from Nutricia, a subsidiary of food and beverage giant Danone; the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and the Texas Beef Council; and the Global Dairy Platform and American Dairy Science Association. Served on a General Mills and Washington Grain Commission panel reviewing the healthfulness of grains. Cofounder and board member of Australia-based Adepa Lifesciences, which sells dietary supplements.
— Michael Goran, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California: Served as scientific adviser to infant formula companies Else Nutrition and Bobbie Labs, and advised Begin Health, which produces gut-health supplements for babies and infants.
— Donald Layman, professor emeritus, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Received consultant fees and/or honoraria from the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the National Dairy Council, and the Institute for Functional Medicine. Serves on the advisory board of the nonprofit Nutrient Institute, which is wholly funded by Nutrient Foods LLC. Co-owner of Metabolic Designs LLC, which sells protein-enriched meal replacement shakes among other nutraceutical products.
— Heather Leidy, Dell Medical School, University of Texas at Austin: Received honoraria and/or research grants from General Mills’ Bell Institute of Health and Nutrition, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the National Pork Board, and Novo Nordisk. Serves on the advisory boards of General Mills Bell Institute of Health and Nutrition, the snack-pack company Rivalz, and the National Pork Board.
— Ameer Taha, University of California, Davis: Received honoraria from the California Dairy Innovation Center as well as research grants from Fonterra Ltd., a New Zealand–based dairy cooperative with US operations; the California Dairy Research Foundation; and the trade association Dairy Management, Inc.
— Jeff Volek, Ohio State University: Cofounder and owner of Virta Health, a firm promoting ketogenic diets to reverse diabetes, and an adviser to the food company Simply Good Foods.
So much for eliminating corporate influence from official government policy, a major concern of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement. Indeed, the day after the guidelines were released, Kennedy attacked the American Heart Association because it rejected adding more red meat and milk to individual diets. He pointed out the organization accepts “millions of dollars from processed food companies” — without noting his own advisers’ ties to the industries he favors.
Back to the Stone Age
As for the guidelines themselves, Kennedy wants Americans to eat more red meat and guzzle more whole milk. Stone Age advice from the Stone Age nutrition expert.
Financially pressed consumers will likely take their cues not from the national nutrition guidelines that Kennedy released, but from the supermarket, where ground beef prices have risen nearly 60 percent in the past decade, nearly twice as fast as the overall consumer price index. As for the price of an occasional rib eye? Fuhgeddaboudit.
Milk is a more complicated story. Over the past half century, per capita milk consumption plunged more than 40 percent. Children are a shrinking share of the population, plus there has been a proliferation of soda, energy drinks, and other beverages lining grocery store shelves.
But that doesn’t mean Americans aren’t getting their fair share of milk solids. Total per capita consumption actually rose since the 1970s as more cheese and yogurt entered US diets, accompanied by high levels of salt and sugar, respectively. A switch to more liquid milk — whole, low-fat, or nonfat — would be a healthier alternative, although it, too, saw prices spike between 2018 and 2022, which discouraged consumption even though, in inflation-adjusted dollars, milk is less expensive today than it was in 1995.
Kennedy delayed releasing the guidelines, which are updated every five years, until last week because he dismissed the report issued last March by a twenty-person scientific advisory panel, which he accused of being industry-dominated. The new guidelines rejected some of the old panel’s advice, notably its long-standing calls to limit saturated fats and alcohol and favor plant-based foods.
Clearly, the conflicts of interest on the previous committee didn’t include the Cattlemen’s Association or the numerous alcohol and bar trade groups that will benefit from the new guidelines, which recommend eating more protein and rejecting specified limits on alcohol consumption. The new recommendations do advise limiting sugar and salt — long-standing recommendations — and, for the first time, call for avoiding processed foods.
It was only this latter recommendation that drew praise from experts, who have long lamented overconsumption of nutritionally disastrous packaged foods that are produced in the industrial kitchens of the nation’s food manufacturing industry.
“The American Medical Association applauds the administration’s new dietary guidelines for spotlighting the highly processed foods, sugar-sweetened beverages, and excess sodium that fuel heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and other chronic illnesses,” American Medical Association president Bobby Mukkamala said in a statement. “The guidelines affirm that food is medicine and offer clear direction patients and physicians can use to improve health.”
The recommendation to limit highly processed foods is “the one good thing” about the new guidelines, Marion Nestle, a nutrition expert at New York University, told StatNews. The recommendation is “clear, straightforward (and) supported by science.”
But Nestle attacked the guidelines’ promotion of increased protein consumption. “These guidelines recommend heavily meat-based diets — protein is a euphemism for meat,” she said. “Eating protein from plant sources is healthier than eating it from animal sources.” None of the changes to the old guidelines included references to scientific studies justifying the administration’s decisions.
Among the more controversial changes will be the change in recommendations regarding alcohol consumption. Previous guidelines called for limiting daily consumption to one drink for women and two drinks for men.
Kennedy also dropped language linking alcohol use to cancer, which has been well-documented in the scientific literature. It is “a win for Big Alcohol,” Mike Marshall, the chief executive of the Alcohol Policy Alliance, told the New York Times. “The thing the industry fears most are consumers educated about the link between cancer and alcohol.”
Big Food’s Role
The new dietary guidelines, while addressed to the general public, generally have a larger impact on food manufacturers and processors, who are the ultimate arbiters of what goes into the American diet. But there’s no evidence yet that the Trump administration plans to take that route to enforce any of the new guidelines, which are purely voluntary.
There is a historical precedent for taking regulatory action. It involves disclosure. Since 1993, the industry has been required to put nutrition labels on packaged foods. This is probably the biggest win for the nutrition advocacy community, which includes the Center for Science in the Public Interest, where (full disclosure) I ran the Integrity in Science project from 2004 to 2009.
If consumers look closely, they can now find accurate information about each package’s fat, salt, sugar, and carbohydrate content. A recent survey found that four in five grocery shoppers read the nutrition fact boxes, although only one in six finds the information trustworthy. Large majorities want more data about the processing of food, its potential allergens, and the sustainability of the ingredients in the package, according to the survey.
Unfortunately, product nutrition labels miss the fastest-growing component of US food consumption: restaurant meals, which are significantly less healthy than home-cooked meals. Over the past half century, restaurants nearly doubled their share of households’ “grocery and restaurant” spend and now account for fully a third of annual caloric intake, according to a 2024 survey by the US Agriculture Department’s Economic Research Service. After a brief pandemic dip, household spending on restaurant meals — about half in the fast-food category — reached an all-time high.
The survey also revealed that restaurant foods — about half of which is fast food — contained far more sodium and refined grains than foods consumed at home, where consumption of those two elements is already 50 percent higher than the previous guidelines’ recommendations. Restaurants, like homes, serve far fewer vegetables, fruits, and nonanimal proteins than recommended by the dietary guidelines.
Not that consumers would necessarily know. Food labeling at restaurants only began in 2018 and only affects chain restaurants with twenty or more locations. Disclosure is limited to calorie counts for standard menu items. Additional nutrition details — such as total fat, saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol, sodium, total carbohydrates, sugars, fiber, and protein — are only provided if a customer asks for it in writing.