It’s a confusing time to be an American looking for the truth about nutrition. With one of the unhealthiest populations in the developed world, the United States government has continuously promoted dietary guidelines that owe more to lobby groups than to common sense, while the people flip-flop between fad diets, from veganism to carnivore.
But in 2025, we got an incredibly refreshing update to the government’s most recent attempt at nutrition advice, namely Michelle Obama’s “My Plate.” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. released the first food pyramid in over 30 years to tell the truth about nutrition—and predictably, the media are belittling the necessary changes RFK Jr.’s new guidance makes. In the “MAHA mom” circles that I frequent, however, RFK’s food pyramid affirms a growing interest among Americans in looking towards more ancestral ways of eating.
In a recent Politico article, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt spoke for all the young moms striving to make healthy choices amid what was an extremely confusing atmosphere.
“Our children should be eating whole foods that are freshly sourced, not processed food,” she said. “They should be eating more protein, not less. They should be drinking whole milk, not skim. These are basic common sense understandings that moms have had for many years, but the government is finally acknowledging them.”
Perhaps the most radical reversal on RFK’s new pyramid is the promotion of meat and high-fat foods like olive oil and whole milk, which have been demonized by “experts” since the 1960s. Long blamed for the rise in heart disease among Americans, meat and fat have been relegated to the smallest corner of the food pyramid since its initial release in 1992. Even with the rise in popular “plant-based” diets, however, Americans have largely continued to reject vegetarian lifestyles—the recent crash in Beyond Meat stock is proof of that.
And, it turns out, our guts were right all along. The initial study linking fat to heart disease was actually funded by the sugar industry to deflect blame, as revealed in this NPR article. The author cites this commentary from JAMA Internal Medicine:
“‘Is it really true that food companies deliberately set out to manipulate research in their favor? Yes […] Recently, the Associated Press obtained emails showing how a candy trade association funded and influenced studies to show that children who eat sweets have healthier body weights than those who do not.’”
Likewise, earlier iterations of the food pyramid were heavily funded by the grain lobby, which may be why grains make up the largest share of the previously recommended “healthy” diet.
RFK’s pyramid stands in sharp contrast, promoting whole foods like steak, eggs, and whole milk over industry plants like cereal and crackers, which were shown on the 1992 pyramid.
HHS also urged Americans to “dramatically reduce” highly processed foods, an essential message in an age when over 70% of the food marketed to babies and toddlers qualifies as ultra-processed, and ultra-processed foods make up 55% of the average adult’s diet.
All of this is great news for Americans. Although the media is slow to catch up, unprocessed and additive-free meat and dairy—as our ancestors would have consumed them—actually reduce the risk of heart disease, and are essential in an age when the nutritional density of our food is rapidly declining.
In fact, the National Institute of Health recently addressed this crisis in its article “An Alarming Decline in the Nutritional Quality of Foods: The Biggest Challenge for Future Generations’ Health.” Paradoxically, modern Americans are simultaneously overweight and literally starving for nutrients. This is because essential foods like fruits, vegetables, and grains have decreased in nutritional content by over 50% since the 1950s. While meat and dairy are also lower in nutrients than they used to be, they are still the highest biologically available food source of vitamins and minerals in their whole, unprocessed forms. It’s no wonder that obesity has continued to rise under previous iterations of the food pyramid.
Take it from this MAHA mom: RFK’s model is the perfect response to the present crisis.
