RFK Jr’s new diet guidelines pose risks for health and the environment, experts say | Robert F Kennedy Jr
New food pyramid by US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) puts animal-based proteins, including cheese and red meat, which are high in saturated fat, above plant-based proteins, setting off alarm bells among health and environmental experts.
This revised food pyramid is in line with previous signals from Kennedy that he would recommend increasing saturated fat in US diets as part of his “Make America Healthy Again” movement.
Dr. D., a board member of the American Heart Association and a professor at the University of California San Diego. Cheryl Anderson said she was eager to read the new guidelines because “they came out much later than they should have. Typically, guidelines are issued within six months of the secretaries receiving the report of the dietary guidelines advisory committee”; which meant they would be released in the summer.
Anderson said he was pleased to see some things align with the DGA committee’s report, including emphasizing the consumption of “real food,” reducing the amount of processed foods in the diet and reducing added sugars. But he was “concerned” when he saw in the food pyramid image that images of steak and cheese were higher, larger, and generally much more prominent than images of plant-based proteins like nuts. This image contradicts written guidelines regarding saturated fats.
“I think it’s going to be difficult to keep saturated fat intake to 10% of total kilocalories. To me, that’s a confusing message for the American people,” Anderson said.
Chloë Waterman, senior program manager at Friends of the Earth, who focuses on school lunches as well as the connection between nutrition and the environment, also said the rules were contradictory and lacked clarity. He suspects the confusion stems from an attempt to “please all stakeholders,” both public health experts and the Maha movement.
Waterman said the rules were vague because of the conflict between text and images, and also that “previous iterations of the rules were hundreds of pages long, and these rules are 10 pages long. So there’s only so much clarity you can fit in 10 pages.”
Waterman added that increasing meat consumption will also negatively affect the environment.
“Americans already consume more protein than recommended, and we are one of the largest meat-consuming countries in the world. This level of meat consumption has a disastrous impact on the planet because industrial animal agriculture is extremely resource-intensive,” Waterman said.
“When we get our calories from animal products, we’re dealing with a range of deforestation to create space to grow animal feed, as well as emissions from the animals themselves. Beef and lamb in particular have really high methane emissions,” Waterman added. Methane spread from cows’ poop, burps and farts and other animals and 80 It is many times more powerful than carbon dioxide.
If Americans consumed more plant-based foods and protein and less meat, they would achieve two goals simultaneously, Waterman said.
“We’re lucky that these things are actually compatible with each other; if we shift our diet towards more plant-based foods, it’s better for the environment and better for our health,” he said, noting that the new rules move in the opposite direction.
It’s unclear how big an impact the guidelines will have on the behavior of U.S. adults. Waterman said Americans tended to ignore past iterations of the DGA that encouraged consumption of more fruits and vegetables, but “this may be different in terms of people wanting to eat more meat and dairy.”
Waterman is most concerned about how the rules will affect school lunches, since the children who consume them have no control over whether or not they follow the rules. He said the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) should create rules to make school lunches DGA-compliant. But this process could take years, and Waterman thinks it will be difficult to increase the amount of meat in school meals, which are currently “heavy with animal products,” without going above the 10% calorie limit from saturated fat.
If the USDA somehow interprets the guidelines to include more meat in school lunches, “we will see a devastating increase in diet-related chronic diseases such as diabetes and metabolic syndrome in children,” Waterman said. Fighting childhood obesity is a key component of the Maha initiative, Kennedy said. But Waterman continued: “Promoting full-fat dairy and red meat, as depicted in the food pyramid, would have the opposite effect on childhood obesity as Kennedy intended.”
