All That Glitters Is Not Gold: A Deeper Look at the New Food Pyramid

When the newly released food pyramid was unveiled, I was genuinely encouraged. Turning the pyramid upside down - placing protein and fats at the top and pushing breads and grains to the bottom - represents a meaningful departure from decades of advice that left many people confused, undernourished, and metabolically compromised.

This is a real step in the right direction, and it deserves to be acknowledged and celebrated.

But as anyone who has spent time working seriously with food, nutrition, or public policy knows, an image is only the beginning. What ultimately shapes real lives - especially in schools, hospitals, military dining halls, prisons, and food assistance programs - is not the graphic itself, but the language, limits, and regulations that sit beneath it.

When we look closely, this new pyramid is both promising and constrained. All that glitters, as the saying goes, is not gold.

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A Genuine Step Forward

First, the good news.

The overall direction of the new pyramid reflects ideas many of us have been teaching and practicing for years: that whole foods, animal protein, and healthy fats form the foundation of human nourishment, and that ultra-processed, sugar-heavy foods should play a minimal role in the human diet.

This is not merely cosmetic. The inversion of the pyramid signals a philosophical shift away from carbohydrate-dominant guidance and toward a model that better reflects human biology, satiety, and metabolic health. Given how influential federal dietary guidance is, this symbolic change matters.

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Real Improvements Worth Celebrating

A deeper look reveals several concrete improvements that align strongly with an Eat Like a Human framework.

Protein Finally Takes Center Stage

The new guidelines explicitly support higher protein intake, roughly 1.2–1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight, compared to the long-standing minimum of 0.8 g/kg. This has profound implications for muscle health, blood sugar regulation, metabolic resilience, and healthy aging.

Full-Fat Dairy Returns

For the first time in decades, the guidelines openly support full-fat dairy, provided it contains no added sugars. This marks a clear break from the low-fat orthodoxy that shaped food policy and institutional menus for generations.

Added Sugar Is Taken Seriously

Rather than framing sugar as a percentage of calories, the new guidance states plainly that no amount of added sugar is recommended, with a practical ceiling of roughly 10 grams per meal. This is a meaningful and long-overdue shift.

Ultra-Processed Foods Are Explicitly Discouraged

The language around avoiding highly processed, packaged foods - especially sugar-sweetened beverages - is stronger and clearer than in previous guidelines.

Lower-Carbohydrate Approaches Are Acknowledged

For people with certain chronic conditions, the guidelines acknowledge that lower-carbohydrate dietary patterns may improve outcomes, signaling a move away from one-size-fits-all nutrition advice.

These are meaningful improvements. They reflect progress many people have worked toward for years.

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Where the Pyramid and the Policy Don’t Align

Despite these advances, significant contradictions remain between the visual message of the pyramid and the real-world guidance embedded in the policy language.

The Saturated Fat Cap Remains

Although animal fats, whole milk, butter, and cheese appear prominently in the pyramid, the guidelines retain the long-standing recommendation that saturated fat should make up no more than 10% of total calories.

This is the central inconsistency.

It is extremely difficult - often mathematically impossible - to follow the pyramid’s visual priorities while staying within this limit. In practice, the foods the pyramid elevates are still penalized by the numbers.

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Grains: Visually De-Emphasized, Textually Preserved - and Critically Incomplete

Visually, grains and breads occupy the narrowest part of the inverted pyramid, implying they should play a minimal role in the diet. That visual messaging resonates with many people who have felt for years that grains were over-emphasized.

However, the written guidelines still actively promote whole grains while discouraging refined grains. There is no recommendation to eliminate grains altogether.

Here’s where the most important omission lies.

If grains are going to be included in the human diet - especially whole grains - they must be traditionally processed to be as safe and nourishing as possible. And this point is entirely absent from the guidelines.

Whole grains do contain more nutrients than white flour - but they also contain more anti-nutrients and defensive compounds, many of which are concentrated in the bran. Phytic acid, lectins, and other compounds can inhibit mineral absorption and stress digestion.

In other words:

• More nutrients increases the need for proper processing

• Traditional processing is the key that unlocks those nutrients

Methods such as soaking, sprouting, sourdough fermentation, and nixtamalization reduce anti-nutrients, improve mineral bioavailability, and make grains far more compatible with human physiology. Encouraging whole grains without encouraging these methods is incomplete - and potentially harmful.

From an ancestral perspective, how food is prepared matters as much as what food is eaten. This essential wisdom remains missing.

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Milk in Practice vs. Milk on Paper

The same disconnect appears with dairy.

While the new guidelines embrace full-fat dairy in principle, institutional meal standards - particularly in schools - have not fully caught up.

For over a decade, schools participating in the National School Lunch and Breakfast Programs have been limited to fat-free or 1% milk. Whole milk and 2% milk were removed in 2012 to align with earlier dietary guidance that tightly restricted saturated fat.

As of now, whole milk is still not universally permitted under existing USDA school meal regulations.

That said, meaningful change is underway. The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act has passed both chambers of Congress and is expected to be enacted. This legislation would allow schools to serve whole, 2%, 1%, and fat-free milk, and would exclude milk fat from saturated fat calculations in school meals.

This is a significant step but it underscores a broader point: visual guidance alone does not change what is actually served. Policy, legislation, and implementation matter.

And even here, there is room to go further. From a biological and ancestral standpoint, dairy is most nourishing when it is whole, non-homogenized, fermented, and - where legal and appropriate - raw. None of this nuance appears in the guidance.

Bill talking to the Village Dairy in Ireland

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Other Areas Still Missing the Mark

• Modern Fruit: Added sugar is limited, but there is no acknowledgment that many modern fruits are bred to be far sweeter and less nutrient-dense than their ancestral or heirloom counterparts.

• Vegetable Processing: Many vegetables require cooking, fermenting, or leaching to reduce defensive compounds and unlock nutrients. Simply telling people to “eat more vegetables” ignores this reality.

• Whole-Animal Nutrition: While animal protein is emphasized, there is no encouragement to use the entire animal - offal, bones, connective tissue - despite their unmatched nutrient density and ethical importance.

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Why This Matters Beyond Individual Choice

Dietary guidelines are not just suggestions for grocery shopping.

They shape:

• School meals

• Hospital food

• Military dining

• Prisons and mental health institutions

• SNAP, WIC, and other food security programs

For millions of people - especially the most vulnerable - these guidelines determine what food is available at all. When guidance is incomplete or contradictory, the consequences are not abstract. They are lived daily.

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A Powerful Beginning, Not the Finish Line

Turning the food pyramid upside down is a powerful symbolic act. It acknowledges what many of us have long known: protein, fats, and real food belong at the center of human nourishment.

But symbols are not enough.

Until the numbers, language, and institutional rules align with the spirit of the pyramid - and until traditional food processing is recognized as essential rather than optional - the promise of this moment will remain only partially fulfilled.

This is a great start.

But there is still much work to do.

So let’s celebrate the progress - and then get back to work.