The New US Food Pyramid Has Been Completely Flipped 

Food pyramid image credit: realfood.gov (USDA/HHS).

US Health Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has unveiled new dietary guidelines that will reset the health benchmark for Americans (and, by association, Canadians).
The implications of this fundamental shift are massive as the new US food pyramid is completely flipped and now puts healthy protein, dairy, healthy fats, vegetables and fruit at the top, with grains at the bottom.
At a White House press briefing towards the end of last week, Kennedy called the changes the “most significant reset of federal nutrition policy in history.”
He went on to say that, “These guidelines replace corporate-driven assumptions with common sense goals and gold-standard scientific integrity. These new guidelines will revolutionize our nation’s food culture and make America healthy again.
For decades, Americans have grown sicker while healthcare costs have soared. The reason is clear: the hard truth is that our government has been lying to us to protect corporate profit-taking, telling us that these food-like substances were beneficial to public health. Federal policy promoted and subsidized highly processed foods and refined carbohydrates and turned a blind eye to the disastrous consequences. Today, the lies stop.”
This incredibly bold step returns us to Hippocrates’ old adage: “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”
These new guidelines, effective through to the end of 2030, will become the default for what’s served to schoolchildren, the military, veterans, the elderly and low-income families that participate in federal programs.
Explaining what his department has done, Kennedy said people may think the new pyramid is upside down, given that the prior pyramid allotted the largest area to grains and the smallest area to fats. “But it was actually upside down before — we just righted it,” Kennedy said. The earlier nutrition model “wrongly discouraged” healthy fats and protein. With this ‘correction,’ “we are ending the war on saturated fats,” Kennedy noted.
The new guidelines website states that every American should eat 1.2 to 1.6 grams of animal and/or plant protein per kilogram of body weight per day, along with “healthy fats” from whole foods such as eggs, seafood, meat, full-fat dairy, nuts, seeds, olives and avocados. People should also eat 3 servings of vegetables, 2 servings of fruit, and 2-4 servings of whole grains. The guidelines also encourage people to drink water, limit alcohol consumption and eat the amount of food appropriate for their age, sex, size and activity level.
The pyramid doesn’t include added sugars. People, especially children, are encouraged to avoid them entirely. Instead, they should eat naturally occurring sugars in whole fruits and plain dairy. “For the first time, the dietary guidelines directly address ultra-processed foods and set firm sugar limits in federal procurement, driving a significant reduction in added sugar in school meals,” Kennedy said. The new guidelines emphasize eating “real” food, defined as minimally processed foods “prepared with few ingredients and without added sugars, industrial oils, artificial flavours, or preservatives.”
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner, Marty Makary, who also spoke at the announcement press conference, cited a study published in JAMA that showed that Americans, especially children, were getting over half their calories from ultra-processed foods. “We now have a generation of kids addicted to refined carbohydrates, low in protein,” Makary said.
Kennedy flagged this as a serious problem. He said: “If a foreign adversary sought to destroy the health of our children, to cripple our economy, to weaken our national security, there would be no better strategy than to addict us to ultra-processed foods. It’s shocking that our own government helped to drive these cataclysmic changes in our diet. The damage is real.”
The US Department of Health and Human Services press release issued after Kennedy’s formal announcement stated that, “The most expensive thing we can do as a country is continue government incentives for food that sickens Americans and drives up health care costs. For instance, 42 million Americans depend on SNAP (being a government food program for low income people) for nutrition – but some of the most popular items on the program are sugary drinks, candy, and chips.
Because 78% of SNAP recipients are on Medicaid, these incentives for unhealthy food also drives up health care costs. This public policy insanity must end. If followed, this new guidance will dramatically lower chronic disease – and health care costs – for Americans.”
According to a recent analysis by Johns Hopkins, 48% of all federal tax dollars are spent on health care – and 90% of US health care spending is on people with chronic diseases. Many of these conditions are preventable, often reversible, and often tied to the food we eat.
Shocking facts that reflect the extent of this health challenge include:

* The United States faces the highest obesity and Type 2 Diabetes rates (OECD) in the developed world.
* The United States spend 2.5 times more per capita than the average of developed countries (OECD) on health care – and their life expectancy is 4 years lower. Chronic conditions tied to food are major contributors to this.
* The US childhood obesity rate is nearly five times higher than some other developed countries like France.
* In the United States, one-third of teens suffer from “pre-diabetes,” 20% of children and adolescents have obesity, and 18.5% of young adults have nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.
* 77% of military-aged youth aren’t eligible to join the military – primarily due to chronic diseases tied to food.
* A recent study of Medicare beneficiaries found that a 15% weight loss reduction resulted in nearly $1,000 per year in lower Medicare spending.

Commenting on this, Sayer Ji of GreenMed Info said, “For far too long, nutrition policy has operated as a subtle but pervasive form of coercion—shaped by entrenched special interests, codified through federal procurement rules, and then imposed at scale through school lunches, military rations, VA hospitals, SNAP, and other food programs.
The reality is that the chronic disease epidemic in this country has been driven largely by two foundational forces: environmental exposures (including an ever-expanding vaccination burden), and nutritional imbalances—deficiencies and excesses alike—exacerbated by a food system dominated by pesticide-laden, ultra-processed, non-organic products.
In recent days, HHS made a stunning and long-overdue shift by halting and reversing the unchecked expansion of the childhood vaccine schedule. And with this equally bold transformation in federal food policy, that same trajectory is now being confronted at its other root.
This is not a cosmetic revision. It is a radical reset. And its implications are profound: a generational course correction with the potential to produce radically positive, enduring improvements in human health—extending far beyond the present moment and into the lives of those yet to be born.”
By flipping the pyramid, this administration is doing something far more disruptive than revising macronutrient ratios. It is breaking a control architecture that has quietly governed public health for half a century. What’s now being centered are foods that have been with humanity since the beginning of time:

* High-quality protein from animal and plant sources
* Natural fats—including traditionally demonized saturated fats like butter
* Whole foods grown, raised, hunted, gathered, and prepared across ancestral cultures
* Fruits, vegetables, and whole grains in their intact forms

And what is finally being displaced from the center?

* Industrial seed oils
* Ultra-processed carbohydrates
* Food-like substances engineered for shelf life, addiction, and profit.

As GreenMed notes, this is biological realism: human physiology did not evolve from refined flour, corn syrup, and oxidized industrial oils. It evolved from nutrient density, protein sufficiency, and fats that stabilize hormones, brains, immune systems, and cellular membranes. 
By restoring these foundations, the guidelines aren’t just correcting a dietary mistake.
They are interrupting the feedback loop that feeds both the chronic disease epidemic and the drug industries built to manage it. “That is why this moment matters. And that is why resistance will be fierce. Because when you flip the pyramid, you don’t just change what people eat—you change who benefits,” explained Sayer Ji.

Sources for this article include:
https://realfood.gov/
https://www.hhs.gov/press-room/fact-sheet-historic-reset-federal-nutrition-policy.html
https://sayerji.substack.com/p/eat-real-food-the-most-radical-nutrition
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/rfk-jr-new-food-pyramid-us-dietary-guidelines