Although the “food pyramid” of nutrition recommendations is practically ancient at this point, the memory of it persists, especially in Americans of a certain age–say, the age of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the secretary of health. 

So it’s no surprise that when an advisory group under his command came along to revise U.S. guidelines on nutrition toward his branded goal to “Make America Healthy Again,” it positioned its recommendation in reference to it, satisfying the RFK’s appetite for radical change by claiming to upend the food pyramid.

Even the New York Times bought into the narrative:

“In a striking reversal of past nutrition guidance, the Trump administration released new dietary guidelines on Wednesday that flip the food pyramid on its head, putting steak, cheese and whole milk near the top.”

But the U.S. hasn’t deployed the food pyramid for two decades, and the visual “flipping” is an optical delusion: the wide part of the triangle, whether at the top or the bottom, always indicated more, as in, eat more of this, and the point of the triangle contained what to eat less of. Since 2011, the federal guidelines–which provide the foundation for dozens of federal feeding programs and serve a public education function–have used a different approach and graphic: MyPlate.

Dr. Jessica Knurick, a dietician who holds a PhD in nutrition science and produces a newsletter on Substack and videos on social media, explains why the more recent recommendations were referenced in a recent column.

“It would be hard to market a “reset” if the public understood what the previous guidelines actually said. So instead, they’re just pretending MyPlate never existed.

“Which is evident right at the top of the new dietary guidelines website, which opens with the 1992 food pyramid and the words “For decades we’ve been misled by guidance that prioritized highly processed food, and are now facing rates of unprecedented chronic disease.” This is, of course, inaccurate and textbook historical revisionism. It takes thirty years of complex nutrition policy and turns it into a simple bad guy, pins America’s health crisis on a graphic that has not been used in two decades, and lets the actual causes of chronic disease completely off the hook.

Dr. Knurick points out that, despite the big announcement, the recommendations actually repeat many of the same as previous administrations (for instance: although Kennedy announced an end to the “war on saturated fats,” it seems more like a surrender, since in the new guidelines, the percentage remains the same, at ten). 

Both old and new versions say to consume a variety of protein sources–animal and plant. 

But here, she points out, is where their words and their graphic differ: animal protein and and fat take up a large portion at the top and plant proteins are “largely absent.”  

“The obvious takeaway for anyone looking at that image,” she says, “is to eat a lot of animal protein.”

So what’s behind that? 

Could it be that six of the nine dietary review authors who wrote the report–after the administration scrapped the originalScientific Report of the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee– have ties to the meat and dairy industry?

It’s hard to say for certain. But the idea of industries themselves being the source of guidelines and regulations of their own industries–whether because leaders from industry were recruited to head regulatory agencies or sit on government panels or because regulations were replaced by “voluntary standards”–naturally feeds suspicion: Are the nutrition guidelines, for instance, tainted by the appearance of influence? That alone is a solid reason to broaden the inputs and widen the sources behind the regulations.

By privatizing regulation, the administration outsources one of the most important roles government should have: protecting the health and safety of its citizens. It calls into question who is at the top of this particular pyramid–the people, or powerful corporations?

Jeff Hagen is a writer from Cleveland, Ohio. For 14 years he was editor of the alumni magazine for his alma mater, Oberlin College. He previously held communication positions for the Center on Urban Poverty and Community Development at Case Western Reserve University and, before that, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.