Decoding the New U.S. Dietary Guidelines with Simon Hill: What They Got Right, Wrong & Why It Matters

"It's a federal policy promoted and subsidized highly processed foods, these new guidelines will make America healthy." Many in the health community worry about the increase in protein. "They have caused quite a bit of discourse, what's good about them, maybe not so good about them.

The problem is that most people will double down on red meat based on what those new guidelines look like.

It makes it very hard to actually consume less than 10% of calories from saturated fat. It does feel like mixed messaging, and this is what's making us sick. I would have liked to have seen more commentary around the fact that 95% of Americans get nowhere near the fiber recommendations.

“This is when that idea of animal protein being better quality, you have to really question it.”

I've gone through this evidence with you in previous episodes, so we don't have to go through all that, but what I'll say is that." "Hey everybody, welcome to the podcast. We have our resident nutrition science expert Simon Hill, host of the proof podcast. And my intention for this episode of the podcast is to have a very focused discussion. The first and what I hope will turn into a kind of regular feature of this show, in which we take an aspect of nutrition and dive into it deeply. But just to get right into it, what's different about these new guidelines that sets it apart from the previous guidelines?

Obviously we have an inverted pyramid versus a plate which preceded it. So where do we begin to understand these differences? Yeah, I think there's more in common with the previous guidelines than maybe a lot of people have been led to believe that's the first thing that I would state. And so this current set of guidelines has, I guess, really emphasized eating real food. But I'll say that the old plate also emphasized eating real food. It just didn't really call it out as explicitly as that.

“And I think that that emphasis in the new guidelines is actually a real positive.”

They've come out and said, let's eat whole minimally processed foods. And they were a little stronger in calling out what they described as hyper processed foods. And so the intent behind that was to discourage the consumption of the hyper palatable, what many people may have previously or heard others describe as ultra processed foods like Kevin Hall. Those are the foods that are high in fat and sodium and sugar that are often

found in the center of the grocery store are extremely palatable and delicious and are associated with excessive calorie consumption and whole host of downstream metabolic consequences and chronic disease. So that is a big tick for the new guidelines.

“The there's also the continued recommendation to keep saturated fat below 10 percent of total calories.”

That's not something that's changed. So it may have seen RFK junior or others in the media saying they're going to come out and take a different approach with saturated fat or fat in these guidelines. And in actual fact in these guidelines, they still recommend consuming a diet that has less than 10 percent of calories from saturated fat. And that's consistent with the best research we have looking at fat quality of fat and cardiovascular disease in particular.

So it's happy to see that in there. The problem is that the recommendations, particularly around

prioritizing protein rich foods and then emphasizing animal sources of protein and recommending the consumption of full fat dairy and then for cooking oils adding in there that butter and talo are also good options makes it very hard when you follow the guidelines to actually consume less than 10 percent of calories from saturated fat. It does feel like mixed messaging because as you correctly pointed out, they vary explicitly state that we should be maintaining

our intake of saturated fat below 10 percent. But when you look at this inverted pyramid, you see all of these animal foods at the top. And there is explicit and inferred reference and prioritization of red meat animal proteins, this emphasis on full fat dairy. And as you said, butter and beef talo, that's curious and interesting and different, obviously. And so there seems to be a sort of

inherent conflict between this messaging of maintaining your intake of saturated fat under 10 percent

with the imagery of these other foods that are at the very top of this new graphic,

that you should be prioritizing. Yeah, so if you if you were to just create a plate of food consistently around the pyramid and those guidelines, most people will naturally consume more

than 10 percent of their calories from saturated fat. And I actually had a conversation with Dr.

Christopher Gardner who was part of one of the committees that spent two years researching to provide an advisory report for the dietary guidelines. And also Ty Beale, who was part of a different group who were engaged by RFK Jr to provide their own report. And both of them agreed that just like health Canada in their dietary guidelines, which specifically says to where possible choose healthy protein from plants in their guidelines, that recommendation really needed

to be in there and made clear. So that yes, there can be a guideline around the importance of

“protein, but protein source is really important. And when you look at the totality of evidence”

beyond just muscle, but you look at protein sources and how it affects cardiovascular disease risk, risk of type 2 diabetes, premature death in long-term observational studies, it becomes clear that plant protein leads to better long-term health outcomes. And it's not to say that someone only needs

to eat plant protein, but the average American today is getting about 75 percent of their daily

protein from animal protein, which of course leaves just 25 percent from plant protein, and they would be doing much better even if that shifted to a 50/50. So absent that direct advice to consume more plant protein and to really prioritize plant protein in the in the pyramid itself, because if you look at the size of the legumes in that pyramid compared to the rib eye, that's high. So most people

“are going to overlook that and I think as a consequence of these guidelines doubled down on the”

consumption of beef and poultry and full fat dairy, right, which plays into this inherent

contradiction between the statements around saturated fat and what is actually being communicated

through this graphic. But what you just shared also brings up a whole bunch of other issues. You mentioned the Advisory Committee, the 2025 Advisory Committee that Christopher Gardner was participating in. This conjures up questions of process and procedure, like what is the process by which these guidelines are established. And historically, there are committees of people. There is this Advisory Committee and it's implied that like the administration

“takes the recommendations from this committee and that's what ends up in these recommendations.”

In the case of the new guidelines, that really wasn't the case. So we have this Advisory Committee that creates this report. And it was to some degree plant forward, not entirely plant-based, but it emphasized vegetables, fruits, legooms, nuts, whole grains. It talks about fish and seafood and unsaturated fats. But it didn't have mention of prioritizing animal proteins, let alone red meat or beeftala, right? Like that seems to fly in the face of the recommendations.

So what do you make of that disconnect between the committee report and the decisions that we're made regarding those aspects of the inverted pyramid that are kind of enathema to the recommendations? Yeah, well, the current administration is essentially set those the committees recommendations to the side and then created their own additional panel of scientists, which then did their own scientific foundation report, which is what Tai BL and Don Layman were a part of. So they were tasked with

reviewing the advisory piece from Christopher Gardner's committee. And they went through 50+ recommendations and you just spoke to some of those recommendations were about eating more plant protein. And they were recommending like Mediterranean, dash pest-caterian-style dietary patterns with a lot of fiber and unsaturated fats and low-enultural processed foods. And around 30 of the 50 something recommendations were completely rejected. And they put forward their own kind of set of recommendations

to the administration. Now the interesting thing is I thought Don Layman, Tai BL, and that group wrote

piece and then administration does what they want to do with it. So at the end of the day and this

might surprise people, I'm led to believe through these conversations I've had that really its politicians that end up writing the guidelines. And to get to the heart of your question, I mean based on what the guidelines look like based on with scientific committees recommendations were in my understanding of the broader literature. I have to think that there are there are reasons beyond public health that have influenced that set of recommendations.

And what would those be Simon? I mean we would be speculating but I'm sure that there's also sort of corporate and financial interests that are affecting the way that things are worded. So let's maintain. There's also the personal preferences of people like RFK Jr. who are at the helm of this. Are they're not totally? And he may, you know, a lot of us can be we have biases that were unaware of and he may be blinded by his own anecdotal experience of

feeling better on the way that he eats. But that's not representative of science. And there's no scientific evidence-based rationale for promoting beeftallow. No and if you, I mean if you go back and read the wording of the healthy fat section in that paper, a year-long nutrition scientist would be able to pick up the errors that were in there. It says to, you know, specifically says

more oils rich in essential fats like olive oil. Now, olive oil contains some essential fats,

but it's very small amount. If you were wanting to eat an oil that's rich in essential fats, essential fats are omega 6 and omega 3 fats. It'd be recommending seed oils. So they actually inadvertently are knowingly recommended the consumption of vegetable and seed oils. The very thing that he demonizes in the media and that was also one of the, I'd say one of the surprising things for me was that nowhere in the guidelines. Not only did they maintain the saturated fat

“less than 10 percent calorie recommendation and I think they really had to, just because the”

evidence is so strong. They did not in any sentence at all, call out seed oils and tell people recommend against their consumption. Because I think that in those cases the evidence was just too strong. So what they did is they just decided to avoid it. They didn't say it was neither good nor bad. It's absent if you control F through the entire document. Seed oils or vegetables, you won't say any commentary on them. Despite how much of a big deal, RFK Junior made about

them in the medium. I know that the AHA Stanford Harvard various nutrition organizations have kind of come out on this saturated fat mixed messaging aspect of the new guidelines with a kind of WTF. Like this doesn't really make sense. And I also know that Jama has explicitly said that the process and procedure that went into crafting these guidelines was a major departure from the usual evidence

“review process. I think the blessing here and it's a blessing and a cause is that 95% of Americans”

do not follow the guidelines. This is the crazy thing about this. There's so much ink spilled about these guidelines every time they drop and whether or not public health outcomes improve

or decline, fingers are always pointed at these guidelines without enough discourse around the

fact that people just don't follow them fundamentally. We can debate them all we want, but fundamentally we're not debating the things that really matter, which is what really shapes someone's diet. And yes, it's interesting and can be helpful for the person out there who has the resources and time and education to kind of listen to these debates and improve some of their diet choices. But the average Americans diet is shaped by their environment, disparity in

income, the social determinants of health. And so I always laugh when people point to the 1980 dietary guidelines and say the recommendation there was to let saturated fat and look at what's happened to health. The recommendation at the time to eat less saturated fat is nothing wrong with that recommendation. It could have been clearer and I think it should have said, "Hey,

“if you want to eat less saturated fat, which is in these foods, what you eat instead is important,”

we want you to eat these whole foods and nuts and seeds and fatty fish and legumes and whatnot

is not because they said eat less saturated fat. It's because the food industry quickly jumped

and said, "Okay, there's a lot. There's a eat less fat message. Let's print that on the front of all of our foods and create these hyper palatable, very energy-dance delicious foods that are low

“fat and a convenient and a cheap and highly processed good shelf life." And that's what people”

people ate less foods that contain saturated fat but swapped it unfortunately with these very ultra-processed, high refined carbohydrates, foods and the consequence of that is that you don't see an improvement in health and if anything you see health move in the direction that was not intended. So it might be fair to say that the majority of people don't really pay much attention to these guidelines, let alone follow them. They are still significant and

important. It's not something that we should dismiss a because they do inform individual decisions,

but also they're critical in terms of setting policy when you think about school lunch programs

and institutional food systems and there's a whole domino effect that occurs from the establishment of these guidelines into food procurement systems, etc. And the food that ends up on your kids' plate at lunch every day. That's right. And I also think we should emphasize that I do think if the average American today, consuming the average American diet, was to instead consume the diet recommended in the guidelines or the last guidelines or the guidelines before

“that they're all like going to be here. I think their health is going to improve. So I just want”

to throw that out there and I think they could be better. And I think that what I would love to say, I think health Canada is probably the best guidelines that are out there or Japan's or Finland, but I'm just waiting for the guidelines to come out and specifically talk about food replacements. We want you to eat less of this instead of eating that explicitly state, what to eat more of. Because the benefit that you get from eating less of something is often yes you're reducing

your exposure of whatever was in that food. But it's a summation of that plus what you're bringing into the diet. Because usually when we take calories out, we bring something else in. What's coming in and what nutritional properties are in that affects that total net outcome. On the plus side, I would say that these new guidelines do take a step in that direction in that they say eat real food. It's like so obvious, right? But to be explicit about that and to avoid

quote unquote highly processed foods, I think there's some issues around the vagueness of that and how that's getting interpreted. But to call that out was something that previous guidelines didn't do. And I think that this set of guidelines also was very conscious of being public facing like directly communicating with the individual as opposed to this thing that the government comes up with to set policy. And I think that that is a positive distinction between

this set of guidelines in past. Yeah, I agree with that. I think I mean you can't fault that their PR campaign, the way that they marketed these new guidelines is superior to previous parties. They, they really were able to get out there on social media. They did a great job with their website and they great the emphasis I think on on real food is a big win. Here is the dilemma. When you choose headphones, you usually have to decide, do you want to be fully

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“And what exactly do the guidelines say about this? I think you know that I think protein is important,”

but we need to contextualize this. So usually when people are talking about protein, the conversation is centered around building muscle or trying to reduce our risk of sarcopenia losing muscles as we age. And particularly, I'm sure you've seen in the last two or three years, that's really taken the podcast world by storm, right? It's all about muscle as it's metabolic organ, it's very important for functional independence as we age for metabolic health.

And I agree with that. Where I would push back a little bit is that the research looking at building good quality muscle and maintaining muscle as it as it pertains to protein. It's pretty clear that when you're in the range of 1.2 grams per kilogram to 1.6 grams per kilogram,

that's an optimal protein intake to support skeletal muscle adaptations, basically to help that

muscle maintain a healthy size and function. The average American today, where do you think their protein intake? I'm sure it for exceeds that. It's at about 1.2 grams per kilogram. So it's right in that range. It's right in that range. So the question that I would throw out to all of us is what explains sarcopenia today, the fact that 30% of ageing adults in America have sarcopenia, which is the loss of muscle, size and function. Sudden dairy lifestyle. It's the fact

that most people are not moving against resistance. The protein intake's already there. But we're spending 95% of the oxygen is given to this to a protein. When that variable is pretty much already taken care of. What's missing is that most people are not doing resistance training. The stimulus is not there. And there are greater analysis, analysis looking at this. If you just take sedentary people and dial up protein, even if you dial it up to like 2 grams per kilogram,

nothing happens to the strength or muscle. Whereas when you add resistance training and even

the first hour a week of resistance training is where most of the benefit is achieved. When you add

that first hour of resistance training, now you start to see as you increase protein up to about 1.5 grams per kilogram, you see significant increases in strength. But most of that strength is actually achieved by 1.2 grams per kilogram. Going from 1.2 to 1.5, we're squeezing the last

“drips of water out of the towel. So I think back to your question about the emphasis on protein”

in the guidelines. I think it's good for people to be protein aware, particularly as people are getting older, where often there is less appetite. That's the population where protein intake can start to fall below 1 gram per kilogram. I think that's a bit of a separate discussion. I think that the guidelines

protein, getting people to choose fatty fish over red meat and poultry and the two main sources

of animal protein in the American diet. And in doing so, people will have still continue to consume enough protein, but at the same time reducing saturated fat, increasing healthy unsaturated fats, increasing fiber consumption. So we're improving diet quality and arguably a message should

“have gone out saying that in order to get this protein to work, you need to move your body.”

Yeah, I think on the plus side, we can say that perhaps protein plays somewhat of a role you tell me if it's significant or not in terms of satiety. Like if we are emphasizing more protein

in our diet, that to your point of like what are we not eating and what are we replacing it with,

that's crowding out our cravings for less healthy options. But at the same time, protein deficiency really isn't a problem. We're under this impression in this culture that we're protein deficient and we're just really not. And that's a very intractable, seemingly intractable kind of idea that everybody needs to be eating more protein. And the concerning aspect of these new guidelines is that it all aims towards these animal proteins with an emphasis on red meat, which if you

talk to people like Christopher Gardner or these research scientists who've been looking at

this intently for decades, there seems to be scientific consensus that elevating your red meat

intake or alternatively your processed meat consumption, that's a separate issue I suppose, is going to worsen long-term outcomes, especially in terms of things like cancer and cardiovascular

“disease. And the dose matters. So I think sometimes that gets a little bit lost in these conversations.”

But if you just glance at these guidelines and you're like, oh, increase your protein. Oh, animal-based proteins. I need to be eating more meat. Looks like red meat's not a problem. I'm going to eat more of that. And that's at the very top of this graphic. Is that not like a common interpretation that the average consumer who isn't like steeped in the science, like someone like yourself, is going to conclude from that? I think most people will

double down on red meat based on what those guidelines look like. If it's a food that they already enjoy and to your point about deficiencies, I would have liked to have seen more commentary around the fact that 95% of Americans get nowhere near the fiber recommendations.

“That really should have been the nutrient of focus, not not protein. And that's why I like the”

recommendation of consuming more plant protein. We're possible because it fixes the fiber thing at the same time and reduces saturated fat. So you kind of get that overall diet, quality improvement. I do think that the definition of quality protein, maybe we can chat about that because I feel like so much of the conversation has been over the last two or three years with regards to sakeopenia, has really sent it on animal protein being superior quality. So I think

people may be confused because they've been led to believe that somehow the animal source of protein is better for protecting their muscle as a age. Would you agree with that? I would agree that that is the common assumption. Yeah. That's the common assumption and it's often explained that the amino acids which are what make up protein are superior ratios in animal protein or more complete that it's more digestible. These are the things that I think people will

feel available, digestible, etc. Across the board, there is this presumption or assumption that if you're getting your protein from an animal source, it is going to be better than the best plant version of that full stop and the inquiry kind of like stops there. Yeah. And then not only is is the amino acid kind of make up superior and more complete, but then plant protein contains fiber and other anti-nutrients which blocks absorbed anti-nutrients. And so I understand

how the average person is kind of left thinking, well, if I'm thinking about quality protein, then the animal protein sounds better because it sounds like my body is going to be out of the absorb more of it and use it to build muscle and I'm going to the gym. I don't want to waste my time. And I look at these guidelines and there's all kinds of animal proteins in there.

logical kind of place to land when you hear all that information, but what I'd say is that that's

an incomplete story because we have to test that hypothesis when you feed people, animal protein in a controlled study and you feed people, plant protein and you expose them to the same type of exercise and you measure muscle protein synthesis so you can actually get into the cell and take a biopsy and look at the synthesis or you do a study that goes longer and you measure changes in muscle size hypertrophy or even better changes in strength because that's really what we

“care about. This is when that idea of animal protein being better quality, you have to really question”

it and I've gone through this evidence with you in previous episodes so we don't have to go through all of it but what I'll say is that researchers like Stuart Phillips who is one of the main protein researchers in the world, Luke Van Loone, I've had both on my show several times. The old kind of way of thinking about protein was that animal protein is more animal like before they had run enough studies to test this and then over time there's been these clinical trials

first looking at healthier adults and people aged in their 30s and 40s and putting one group

on a completely plant-based eye where 100% of the proteins coming from plants and the other group on an omnivorous diet representative of American style diet in terms of where proteins coming from and putting them in resistance and training following them for 10 weeks or 12 weeks and tracking those things that I've mentioned and we don't see any significant differences in terms of those outcomes, muscle size and muscle strength. This idea of bio-availability and amino acid make-up,

it's not affecting those outcomes that we care about. There has been this kind of secondary question to that of, okay, well those are healthier adults, they're in their 30s and 40s, but what about an older population of people who have some age-related muscle changes, maybe you've heard of animal-like resistance? So that is this idea that as we get older, our muscle is less responsive to resistance training and to protein, less sensitive.

And that maybe you need more protein or high-quality protein or more resistance training to attenuate the loss as you age. And so that was a question that was outstanding and then look

“fan Loon, his group, he's based in the Netherlands. Great guy, you should have him on the show.”

Well, yeah, I had him on last year. Anybody you'd recommend? He's, he's, I would say is considered probably the top protein researcher out there, you know, top, top five. And they were, he was interested in looking at muscle proteins synthesis, looking at animal protein, both plant protein. And they did it in a single meal and they looked at a meal that was rich in beef and then a plant base meal and they looked at they were doing elderly subjects. So these were 70 year olds.

And in the single meal, the animal protein led to more muscle protein synthesis in the first

couple of hours. And so their hypothesis was, okay, we want to measure this over a 10-day period and look at daily muscle protein synthesis. And now we want to look at the, the nervous diet and a completely vegan diet. And so they ran that study and it was a crossover study. So every participant got to do both, both diets in separate orders, which means you act as your own control. So this is considered a very high quality trial. And they found the no significant differences

in muscle protein synthesis. So what happened to the person who got the sort of additional stimulus through the animal protein initially in the hours? So it's a great question to that like even out over time. Yeah, so one of, and this kind of, brings into question all historical studies that have looked at like a two-hour window of muscle protein synthesis. Because it might be that fiber and other components in plant protein delays the, the absorption of of amino acids. But that doesn't

result in less muscle protein synthesis over time if you, if you follow that signal for longer. So the area under the curve is seems to be just as big. But it's a different curve. Instead of it just going up and down quickly, it's more of a delayed curve that stays on delayed and a

“ball like response. Right. And so that's why they were interested in looking at the daily,”

the total 24-hour window, muscle protein synthesis. And that's where they didn't see any significant difference. And then naturally they were interested in, okay, well that's 10 days and that's looking

take this study further with these seven year olds? And let's look at changes in muscle size

and in strength. And this is the study we were waiting for. And so that first study,

important to note that they, they fed people all the meals. It was like a metabolic ward almost, provided all the food. Just controlled all the variables. And so the omnivore study and the vegan diet, 1.1 grams of protein per kilogram. That's the intake they looked at. Why did they look at that? Because they wanted to look at a real world intake back to our, what we were saying earlier, that's pretty much where people are at. And in the real living study where they wanted to carry it

“out over, I believe, 10 or 12 weeks. And this study, I was on, I was emailing Luke family this morning,”

has been accepted for, for being published. It's, it's actually not out as we were called this

right now. So I've had, I've had the, the ability to kind of look through this study beforehand. So this will be new for some people that are listening. But they, what they found was that when, when it was a real living experiment, and they had people on the vegan diet, these seven year olds, what do you think happened to their protein intake? I don't know, dropped. What do you mean it dropped? The, the vegan diet was more filling. People reported being full or after meals.

They ate less calories and less total protein, which is a really good thing in a country where

people are consuming too many calories. It's actually a positive thing for like cardiovascular

“metabolic, all of the fiber, you know, everything else that comes packed around protein source.”

But it seemed to reduce muscle protein synthesis. Now, they've gone, gone back and looked at this, and this will be in the paper that when they added resistance training to it, even though that the the vegan group were consuming less protein, muscle size and strength was no different. Meaning the conclusion that you draw from that is that it's much more about the resistance training than it is about a specific amount of protein intake. Yeah, let alone the

source of that protein. Yeah, and, and what I would say is if you're talking about an elderly population that's not training, then if they're not training and they just start eating a vegan diet and they're not thinking about their protein intake, not good. Might not be a good thing. And that study's not even measuring bone density. And we know that I would say, I would say one of the limitations of a, ever vegan diet, I think all diets have limitations. If you look in the literature,

big benefits for like cardiovascular metabolic health, but often there are these studies that show it increase risk of fracture. So that's not even measured in this study, but I would say that if you were 70 plus, you wouldn't want to just kind of blindly follow a vegan diet without being aware of protein and not doing resistance training. I think make sure resistance training is in play if you can. And whatever way that looks like. And then having some intentionality on

“protein intake, I think is important, particularly as we age, if we're noticing that we're eating”

less overall food volume. But setting aside the cohort of the elder person, 70 and above, and just looking at the average maybe middle-aged American or even younger Americans, or people across the world. I mean, we're talking to everybody here. The TLDR here is this over-emphasis on animal-based proteins is misplaced because the evidence pretty strongly suggests that there isn't a difference in terms of the anabolic effects of protein based upon whether it's derived from an animal source

or a plant source. Right, but with the plant source, and this comes back to what is our definition quality, I think our definition of quality has to be muscle related outcomes, but also a chronic disease, health span outcomes. Right, one is lifestyle disease promoting because it has a lot of saturate that. And not for nothing, perhaps hormones and all these other things that come from animal agriculture, whereas the plant version is not only lacking those negatives, but has all these

other beneficial health benefiting aspects to it, the fiber, the micro nutrients, polyphenols, etc.

off total protein. But then by choosing more plant protein, you are also optimizing cardiovascular metabolic risk factors like APOB, blood pressure, blood glucose control, all of these things that predict someone's risk of having a heart attack or having a stroke or developing diabetes,

“developing fatty liver disease. So I think just having a bit more of a holistic definition of what a”

quality protein is would be really helpful right now.

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should we not be confused? Charitable interpretation is that if you're in a school

“and kids getting full-fat milk or low-fat, low-fat milk is usually pretty watery. So what do they do?”

They flavor and add all sorts of sugars and it's the flavoured milk. So the charitable interpretation is that they are making an improvement upon flavoured milk products by recommending the consumption

of full-fat dairy. When you look at the evidence and we've been through this before, you always have

to ask compared to what. Because you can make any food, food group look good or bad depending on what you compare it to. And I would say full-fat dairy is one of those confusing food groups. It depends which type of dairy we're talking about, we're talking about butter or cheese or yogurt or milk. But if you compare cheese to butter, well I can sit here and make the argument then cheese low as cholesterol. It improves cholesterol. This study's showing that. But what I'd

be leaving out is that if I compare cheese to nuts and seeds and sources of unsaturated fats,

“cheese significantly increases cholesterol. So I think the overall recommendation for full-fat”

dairy, I think that what I wish was in there was an acknowledgement that a lot of people are like toast intolerant. It wasn't in there. And a stronger emphasis on when you're choosing plant-based alternatives, what to look for. Because I do think that from a plant-based alternative, they're also the such a wide range of choices and not all of them are a good substitute for faderi. Some of them are very low in protein that don't contain B12 or vitamin D or iodine. And in

fact there's a big push right now to say, hey, why don't we regulate plant-based alternatives a bit more

iodine so that the person who's shifting off of dairy for health reasons, environmental or ethical,

whatever they're bringing into their diet is actually a satisfactory replacement.

“Overall, I wasn't too phase by the overall dairy recommendations because I think you can have”

some dairy within a healthy diet if you're lactose tolerant. We see that in Mediterranean diets and dash diets and Nordic-style diets. I didn't like the recommendation for bottle. I think that was very contradictory to the best evidence that we have out there along with with Talo. So that was confusing. And I mean, that's really all I have to say about that. Yeah, I can't help but think that at least on some base level, this emphasis on full fat dairy stems from a reaction to the ineffectiveness

of previous decades of campaigns pushing low fat and fat-free foods. So we talked earlier about this narrative of like, oh, like look what happened when we told everyone to eat low fat and everybody got fat or than ever, let's stop vilifying fat. Fat has its proper place in a healthy diet and we should be eating full fat and not be afraid of fat. That's kind of like a general narrative that's out there. And so does that not translate into this mention in the guidelines of

“like full fat dairy, like it kind of like emanates from that place. Likely, and I think the public”

deserve to know that, again, that the low fat messaging didn't work, not because they're the science was wrong on such a trade-in fact. It didn't work because the messaging resulted in people consuming more low fat ultra-processed foods. They weren't consuming more nuts and seeds and all of them. So I think you're right in that a lot of people have been led to believe that that's not the problem. We blamed the wrong thing, but there's a little bit of nuance or a lot of nuance

and context missing from that. I guess my overall perspective on this is, on the one hand, I think it's great that these guidelines say, look, you got to eat real food, whole foods,

“emphasis on whole foods. You got to get rid of the highly processed foods. We can all agree”

these are positive things. And I like the fact that these guidelines are consumer-facing and are thinking about the individual and not just a governmental kind of like policy issuance. So there's a lot of good to be said about that in addition to the fact that it takes a pretty hard

line on added sugar and sugary beverages. And basically saying like no amount of added sugar is okay.

Like, yeah, that's a pretty good, you know, kind of public health message. It's limiting sodium to beneath 2,300 milligrams a day. The language around alcohol maybe could be a little bit more strident, basically saying like drink less. But fundamentally, when, you know, we glance out and kind of look at modern developed society, we just see chronic lifestyle diseases running rampant, like the increase in cardiovascular disease and stroke and chronic high blood pressure,

the rise in type 2 diabetes, dementia, Alzheimer's, all of these things derived from at least in some part decisions around nutrition and lifestyle. And when I see guidelines that are emphasizing things that are kind of disease promoting on some level, like too much read me, you know,

like basically people are eating too much saturated fat. They're eating too many animal products.

They're not suffering from a protein deficiency. They're not getting enough fiber. And I would have preferred if the messaging was, you know, along those lines in consistent with that, like we need to be eating more plant foods. I'm not saying everybody should go plant-based, but like people are not eating enough fruits and vegetables and nuts and seeds and legumes. They're eating way too much meat. They're eating way too much processed food. Way too much saturated fat. They're walking around

worried if they're getting enough protein while they're eating literally hamburgers every single day. Like it's insane, right? And we're all sick. And then we want to say, oh, it's because of the low fat messaging or it's because we're not getting enough protein. When it's so obviously the result of

over indexing on the bad fats. And this is what's making us sick, especially when you combine

“it with a lack of exercise and movement. Yeah, I like it. Yeah, I like it. Yeah, yeah, I like it. Yeah,”

yeah, but I would, the, there's another side of me that that feels like 60 to 70% of the average American's diet is coming from ultra-process foods and should be let perfection be the enemy of good here. And it comes back to, I just think it's more interesting, totally too, to ask, you know, why can't the average American follow these guidelines? What's the structural problems? Like what has to change? Human beings are messy. Human beings are messy. Human beings are messy, you know?

But we're emotional. We eat based on emotion and are and basically environment. That's true.

We, and the environment, peace is kind of where I'm getting at. I think some might think that the answer here is more educational technology, like where the CGMs and these types of things. But the more I've been, the longer I've been in this space, I realize that it's a lot more complex than that. To truly shape the average American's diet and to truly, like, reduce the metabolic diseases is, is going to take massive structural changes. And that requires

“policy changes. Yeah, I think that's an important emphasis. The word structural and environmental.”

When we put it all on the individual and basically say, well, it's up to you and your well-powered

and make these decisions. Like human beings are just, we're not very good at that. And this goes back to something damn butner has shared on the podcast a couple times. Like it's all about your environment. Like your environment has to be conducive to making the healthy choice. And when your environment is kind of pushing you towards making those unhealthy choices, you're swimming upstream. And it's very difficult for the individual to make the contrary healthier choice. We need, you know,

bike lanes. We need policy shifts that remove the vending machines from the schools and the offices and the institutions. We have to make the healthy foods available at arms length and affordable. And this is all dictated by policy, public health policy. And this gets at the core of like what Jessica Nirk talks about. When you have someone like RFK Jr who's running HHS, he can say everything he wants to say about what he's going to do to make America healthy again. But essentially,

every single one of his talking points speaks to some personal choice around a diet, you know, like whether it's like swapping seed oils for butter. It doesn't even matter. It's all about the individual. But he's in charge of an institution that is responsible for public health initiatives, regulatory policy, for public health writ large, like those systems and those structures that drive us either towards poor health outcomes or improved health outcomes. And that's what's

important here, right? Like are these things that HHS is doing driving improved public health outcomes or not? And to the extent that everything he's saying is about like personal choice, that's not really what his job is. One of these strongest predictors of health span is zip code. Where do you live? What environment do you personally live in? And I think that was something I did didn't appreciate a decade ago or not nearly enough. And so people might be listening to

thinking, well hang on rich, you know, I heard information and I was able to dramatically change my

“life. And to that I would say, you know, I believe that you need to top down and bottom up approach.”

So top down policy changes, bottom up like what we're doing and educating people, I think that's great and it's helpful. It's a public service or I wouldn't do it, and I'm sure you wouldn't either. But at an individual level, I think it's worth understanding and having greater empathy to know that

our circumstances and capacity to change or not always equal to everyone else's, depending on

the environment. And it comes back to all of those different social determinants of health. And so I agree with that. I think Jessica Nurek's doing a great job at like really putting a number of these things front and center and saying, hey, you know what, my, how you're doing a great job at identifying the problem, ultra-process foods food environment. But you know where you could do better. Let's make changes to that structure rather than talking about things that the individual can

with incredibly healthy options in between this studio and my home that I drive by every day.

And I benefit from a health perspective because of that fact, because that is in my environment. And I'm privileged enough to be able to afford those foods. Not everybody is in that situation. And they're living in environments where they're surrounded by people who are making unhealthy choices. And the healthy choices are not at arms reach or they are on affordable. And to put it on that person to go against the grain in that environment is not going to solve the problem.

So these are, yeah, these are, that's a top down perspective on the problem. We all

can make better choices every single day. Like I said, I do think we're all making these choices

emotionally and developing a degree of self-awareness and exercising some discipline. We can all do better with regard to that. But that alone from the bottom up is not going to solve the problem

“either we do need both approaches. I think we could have probably a roundtable with Jessica,”

Nurek and others. This is an area that I understand. I would say loosely at a high level and want to know and learn a lot more about what we're, because a lot of this has been looked at from an evidence perspective, you know, what shifts the needle when you do an intervention to change food marketing to kids, does it change things? When you fund certain programs or you have certain taxes on certain foods, what are the outcomes and what are other countries seen?

And so I think there are blueprints out there and damn you and it talks about those. But it might be an interesting discussion to kind of dig deeper into in the future. We should let's get Jessica in here and we'll do it together. I would love that be great. Speaking of which, I'm talking to the audience now, like I do want to do some roundtable kind

“of stuff. So we're working on some plans with that as well, which I think would be fun when we”

can speak to something that's very topical and on people's minds to be part of the conversation around these kind of health and nutrition related or fitness related concerns. So I look forward to hosting you for a couple of those as well. I think you're the perfect host to do that and I think that the community desperately needs those conversations more to come. Any final words on the guidelines? I created a free to access web page called realfood.theproof.com.

And because I was inundated from from people messaging me saying, hey, I've been listening to your show for eight years and Christopher Gardner and Kevin Hall and all these guys and you go for eight hours and then it's like, yeah, but okay, what do I eat and what do I eat and also they're like in the new dietary guidelines to come out and they seem a little different to what you guys are talking about. So I went through the the scientific recommendations from Christopher Gardner's

committee, which was 20 of the top nutrition scientists in the states who worked on it for two years. And I took those recommendations and developed a very clean simple set of guidelines that also addressed to some of the myths that we've spoken about. And so there's a very simple almost landing page realfood.theproof.com. And so if you're wanting to kind of double click on the new dietary guidelines and make sense of things from a very practical point of view, I would

visit that. And then lastly, I would say if you're looking for a official set of country guidelines to really hang your hat on, look at Canada's. Canada's the best. Yeah. Your page that you

“mentioned is incredible. Like you shared it with me before I think actually you even published it.”

And I was like, how did you do this? It's incredible work and super helpful and very

graphic laden in a way that makes it intuitive and easy to kind of remember. It's a that is an act of of service, my friend. Thank you. So the URL for that again one last time. We'll food dot theproof.com. And make sure to check out the proof podcast here at voicing change. Yeah, I just did that conversation with Christopher Gardner and Ty Beale as well. So that could be another resource people might make sure. All right, thanks my friend. Thank you. Let's do it again. So,

all right, peace. Thanks.