{"id":408061,"date":"2026-01-15T04:41:16","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T04:41:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/408061\/"},"modified":"2026-01-15T04:41:16","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T04:41:16","slug":"the-governments-new-food-pyramid-tastes-like-tech-bro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/408061\/","title":{"rendered":"The government\u2019s new food pyramid tastes like tech bro"},"content":{"rendered":"

This column is just a part of the Off Menu newsletter, where, every Wednesday, you\u2019ll get restaurant news, gossip, tips, and hot takes. To sign up, visit The Standard\u2019s newsletter page<\/a> and select Off Menu. It\u2019s free to subscribe! <\/p>\n

Last week, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. introduced new national dietary guidelines. The government giddily threw out Michelle Obama\u2019s admittedly joyless MyPlate (opens in new tab)<\/a> infographic, introduced in 2011, and reclaimed the original 1992 food pyramid image \u2014 but flipped it on its head. The upside-down triangle is now filled with colorful pictures of a generally healthy mix of broccoli, frozen peas, an apple, avocado, chicken, butter, whole milk \u2014 all topped off with a nice, juicy T-bone.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The meaty audacity of this gesture feels familiar. It\u2019s as though our country has been told to eat like a San Francisco tech bro. Jacob Peters, the young founder of Superpower, \u201cthe world\u2019s most comprehensive longevity system on the planet,\u201d is just one of them; we met last year at a lunch to which he brought his own beef tallow<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Peters gave me his take on the new pyramid: \u201cWe\u2019ve taken the power back,\u201d he said with on-message enthusiasm. \u201cHigh-quality, nutrient-dense fats are, as you know, a staple of mine and I think really important for health.\u201d Peters eats 160 grams of protein daily (30% of it from red meat, 30% from poultry and fish, and 40% from plant-protein powder and actual plants).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Chicken,The new food pyramid. | Source: Courtesy US Government<\/p>\n

In an email, Bryan Johnson<\/a>, the L.A.-based king of the \u201cDon\u2019t Die\u201d longevity movement, said the new guidelines are \u201ca big upgrade,\u201d in part because they \u201cmove on from the dogmas of stigmatizing and largely capping fats regardless of source and type.\u201d One of his few quibbles? He actually suggests limiting consumption of red meat and instead prioritizing protein- and fiber-rich legumes. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Meanwhile the big-pec\u2019ed podcaster and Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman, who has popularized many longevity theories, called the new dietary guidelines \u201cspot on (opens in new tab)<\/a>.\u201d He posted an image on X (opens in new tab)<\/a> of a skinny, pale, bald man being forcibly removed, with the quip: \u201cThe new @HHSGov (opens in new tab)<\/a> food pyramid\u2019s take on veganism and grains.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The 2026 dietary recommendations could be summed up as \u201cEat food. Not many grains. Fry everything in beef tallow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many experts\u00a0 \u2014 like Christopher Gardner (opens in new tab)<\/a>, director of nutrition studies at the Stanford School of Medicine, and author Michael Pollan, who I interviewed last week<\/a> \u2014 are on board with the government\u2019s message that whole foods are good and ultraprocessed foods are bad. But the change they have criticized most is the recommendation to increase one\u2019s daily protein intake from 0.8 grams per kg of body weight to 1.2 to 1.6 grams. (It is not surprising to find that \u201cBig Meat\u201d was behind the new guidelines (opens in new tab)<\/a>.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

As a rebuttal to Pollan\u2019s \u201cEat food. Not too much. Mostly plants,\u201d the 2026 dietary recommendations could be summed up as \u201cEat food. Not many grains. Fry everything in beef tallow.\u201d As Kim Severson wrote (opens in new tab)<\/a> in The New York Times, \u201cThis relatively obscure cooking medium quickly became a political symbol (opens in new tab)<\/a> for the Trump allies pushing for drastic change to the American food system.\u201d RFK likes his cow fat (opens in new tab)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m no vegetarian, but what I don\u2019t like about the high-protein craze is that, for those who only skim the guidelines, it appears to encourage Americans to eat even more animals. It smacks of wealth and privilege, with little concern for anything else. Peters is less bothered. \u201cThere are a lot of things that are bad for the environment, probably even worse than cow methane production,\u201d he said. \u201cProducing processed almond milk takes, like, an absurd amount of water.\u201d <\/p>\n

What about animal welfare? Is that ever a part of the Superpower equation? \u201cFrankly,\u201d he said, \u201cI\u2019ve never thought about it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This column is just a part of the Off Menu newsletter, where, every Wednesday, you\u2019ll get restaurant news,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":408062,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[299,97,269,172,196248],"class_list":{"0":"post-408061","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nutrition","8":"tag-food","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-nutrition","11":"tag-tech","12":"tag-tech-bros"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/408062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}