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

Episode Date: March 26, 2026

Simon Hill is a nutritionist, physiotherapist, and host of “The Proof” podcast. We dig into the newly released U.S. Dietary Guidelines: what changed, what the evidence actually supports, and how the final document diverged from the advisory committee's recommendations. The fine print reveals a factual error a first-year nutrition student would catch, and a notable omission that raises serious questions about how these guidelines were made. Simon is a trusted guide through difficult terrain. Enjoy! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today's Sponsors: Shokz: Visit SHOKZ.com and use code RICHROLL to receive an exclusive offer on your purchase👉🏼https://beopen.shokz.com/RichRoll-OpenFitPro   Noble Mobile: The first phone carrier that pays you to use your phone less. Try it for just $10 with code RICHROLL👉🏼https://www.noblemobile.com/richroll  Rivian: Electric vehicles that keep the world adventurous forever👉🏼https://www.rivian.com  Check out all of the amazing discounts from our Sponsors👉🏼https://www.richroll.com/sponsors Find out more about Voicing Change Media at https://www.voicingchange.media and follow us @voicingchange

The Trump administration making over America's food pyramid. For decades of 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, what's 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 of it, 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 kind of 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 and 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 a whole host of downstream metabolic consequences and chronic disease. So that is a big thing. tick for the new guidelines. There's also the continued recommendation to keep saturated fat

below 10% of total calories. That's not something that's changed. So it may have seen RFK Jr. 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% 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 I was 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 tallow are also good options, makes it very hard when you follow the guidelines to actually consume less than 10% of calories from saturated fat. It does feel like mixed messaging because, as you correctly pointed out, they very explicitly state that we should be maintaining our intake of saturated fat below 10%. 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 tallow. 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 factors. under 10% with these you know in with the imagery of these other foods that are at the very top of this new graphic which seems to communicate this idea that these are the healthiest foods and

these are the ones that you should be prioritizing right 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% of their calories from saturated fat and i actually had a 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 Biel, 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 diet, diabetes, premature death, you know, 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% of their daily protein from animal protein, which of course leaves just 25% 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 pyramid itself, because if you look at the size of the legumes in that pyramid compared to the rib eye, they're tiny. So most people are going to overlook that and I think as a consequence of these guidelines double down on the consumption of beef and poultry and full fat dairy. Right, which plays into this inherent contradiction between the statements around saturated that 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 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, legumes, 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 beef tallow, 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 were made regarding those aspects of the inverted pyramid that are kind of anathema to the recommendations? Yeah, well, the current administration essentially set those, the committee's recommendations to the side and then created their own additional panel of scientists. which then did their own scientific foundation report, which is what Ty Beale and Don Lehman were a part of. And so they were tasked with reviewing the advisory piece from Christopher Gardner's committee. And they went through 50 plus recommendations,

and you just spoke to some of those recommendations were about eating more plant protein. And they were recommending like Mediterranean-Pescatarian-style dietary patterns with a lot of fiber and unsatribal. fats and low and ultra 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 Lehman Ty Biel and that group wrote the guidelines but they didn't even write the guidelines they just

hand over their advisory 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 it's 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 where the scientific committee's recommendations were, and my understanding of the broader literature, I have to think that 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 all sorts 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 not? Totally. And he may, you know, a lot of us can be, we have biases that we're 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. There's no scientific evidence-based rationale for promoting beef tallow.

No. And if you, I mean, if you go back and read the wording of the healthy fat section in that paper, a year one nutrition scientist would be able to pick up the errors that were in there. It says to, you know, it specifically says, eat more oils rich in essential fats like olive oil. Now, olive oil contains some essential fats, but it's a 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, unknowingly 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% calorie recommendation, and I think they really had to, just because this evidence is so strong. They did not in any sentence at all call out seed oils and tell people who 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 vegetable oils, you won't see any commentary on them, despite how much of a big deal RFK Jr. made about them in the media. 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, you know, 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 course, is that 95% of Americans do not follow the guidelines. Yeah, I mean, this is the crazy thing about this. there's so much ink spilled about these guidelines every time they drop. And, you know, 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. Yeah. So, I mean, 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, you know, 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, these social determinants of health. And so, you know, I always laugh when people point to the 1980 dietary guidelines and say, you know, the recommendation there was to eat less saturated fat and look at what's happened to health. The recommendation at the time to eat less saturated fat, there's 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, you know, these whole foods and nuts and seeds and fatty fish and legumes.

and whatnot. It didn't necessarily say that. But the increase in obesity and the increase in type 2 diabetes is not because they said to eat less saturated fat. It's because the food industry quickly jumped and said, okay, 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-dense, delicious foods that are low-fat and are 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 carbohydrate 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, you know, there's a whole domino effect that occurs from the establishment of these guidelines into, you know, food procurement.

systems, et cetera, and, you know, 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. Yeah. Or the last guidelines or the guidelines before that. They're all like going to be good. 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 see, 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.

And 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, you know, 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 and past. Yeah, I agree with that. I think, I mean, you can't fault their PR campaign. The way that they marketed these new guidelines is superior to previous parties. They really were able to get out there on social media. They did a great job with their website. And I agree, the emphasis I think on real food is a big win.

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get paid to use your phone less. One of the other differences is this emphasis on increasing protein intake. What do you make of this? And what exactly do the guidelines say about this? Okay, 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 is this 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 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 far 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 psychophenia today, the fact that 30% of aging adults in America have sarcopenia, which is the loss of muscle size and function. Sedentary lifestyle. It's the fact that most people are not moving against resistance. The protein intake is already there.

But we're spending 95% of the oxygen is given to this to 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 great analysis analysis is looking at this if you just take sedentary people and dial up protein even if you dial it up to like two grams per kilogram nothing happens to their strength or muscle and 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 one gram per kilogram. I think that's a bit of a separate discussion. I think that the guidelines should have had some emphasis on protein, more so on the source, getting people. to choose plant protein, getting people to choose fatty fish over red meat and poultry, the two main sources of animal protein in the American diet. And in doing so, people would have still continued 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, you know, 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 new 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 protein. And that's why I like that. the recommendation of consuming more plant protein where 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 sarcopenia has really centered on animal protein being superior quality. So I think people may be confused because they're, they've been led to believe that somehow the animal source of protein is better for protecting their muscle as they age. Would you agree with that? I would agree that that is the common assumption. 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 avoid. Bioavailable, 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 uh kind of makeup superior more complete but then plant protein contains fiber and other antinutrients which blocks absorption anti-nutrient argument yeah 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's going to be able to 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 like animal proteins in there. So that's what that's what I'm going to do. And so I actually empathize and I think that that is a logical kind of place to land when you hear all of that information. But what I'd say is that that's, that's an incomplete story. Because we have to 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 start, 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, you know, researchers like Stuart Phillips, who is one of the main protein researchers in the world, Luke Van Loon, I've had both on my show several times, the old kind of way of thinking about, protein was that animal protein is more anabolic. Before they had run enough studies to test this. And then over time, there's been these clinical trials first looking at healthy adults,

people aged in their 30s and 40s, and putting one group on a completely plant-based diet 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 training, following them for 10 weeks or 12 weeks. and tracking those things that I mentioned. And we don't see any significant differences in terms of those outcomes of muscle size and muscle strength. So this idea of bioavailability and amino acid makeup, 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 healthy 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 anabolic 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 Luke Van Loon, his group, He's based in Netherlands. Great guy. You should have him on the show. I will.

Yeah, I had him on last year. Anybody you recommend not having a house. He is, I would say, is considered probably the top protein researcher out there, you know, top five. And he was interested in looking at muscle protein synthesis, looking at animal protein versus 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-based meal. And 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 omnivorous 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 diets in separate orders, which means you act as your own control. So this is considered a very high quality trial. And they found 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 subsequent to the meal? Did 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 absorption of amino acids, but that doesn't result in less muscle protein synthesis over time if you follow that signal for longer.

So the area under the curve 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 up. Like a time-delayed anabolic 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 at a biomarker of muscle protein synthesis. why don't we be the first lab in the world to 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 fed people all the meals.

It was like a metabolic ward almost, provided all the food. Just controlled all the variables. And so the omnivorous diet 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 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 emailing Luke Van Lund this morning, has been accepted. for being published. It's actually not out as we record this right now. So I've had the ability to kind of look through this study beforehand. So this will be new for some people that are listening. But what they found was that when it was a real living experiment and they had people on the vegan diet, these 70-year-olds, what do you think happened to their protein intake?

I don't know. It dropped. What do you mean it dropped? The vegan diet was more filling. People reported being fuller 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 cardiometabolic health.

Because all of the fiber and, you know, everything else that comes packed around the protein source. But it seemed to reduce muscle protein synthesis. Now, they've 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 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, let alone. the source of that protein. Yeah, 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, might not be a good thing.

Not good. And that study is not even measuring bone density. And we know that I would say, I would say one of the limitations of a vegan diet, I think all diets have limitations. If you look in the literature, big benefits for like cardiometabolic health, but often there are these studies that show 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 in 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 souls, and this comes back to what is. our definition of quality. I think our definition of quality has to be muscle-related outcomes,

but also chronic disease, health span outcomes. Right. One is lifestyle disease promoting, because it has a lot of saturated fat, 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 do it the fiber the you know the kind of micronutrients polyphenols etc right so you you can you can optimize for your skeletal muscle and your bone by making sure you're eating enough total protein but then by choosing more plant protein you are also optimizing cardiometabolic risk factors like apobe be 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. This episode is sponsored by Rivien. For me, historically, a car has always just been a way to. to get around, but I have to say, I am just in love with the R1S Rivian loaned me. Because it's this incredible all-electric vehicle with insane tech that can take you just about anywhere, but mostly because it's so much more than a vehicle. It's like this passport for adventure, which got me thinking

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The R1T is a truck that can tow, it can haul, and still feel beautifully designed. Most vehicles make you choose between rugged and refined. Rivian gives you both so you can adventure without compromise. The other big distinction between previous guidelines and this one is the emphasis on full fat. The old guidelines, many previous guidelines were emphasizing low fat or fat free. But we have this full fat diet aspect to these guidelines. So what do you make of that? What motivated that?

what is the kind of charitable interpretation of that and where should we not be confused? Charitable interpretation is that if you're in a school and a kid's getting full fat milk or low fat, low fat milk is usually pretty watery. So what do they do? They flavor it and add all sorts of sugars and it's the flavored milk. So the charitable interpretation is that they are making an improvement. improvement upon flavored 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 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 what type of dairy we're talking about are we 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 that cheese lowers cholesterol it improves cholesterol the study's showing that and but what i'd be leaving out is that if i compared 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 lactose 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, there's such a wide range of choices, and not all of them are a good substitute for dairy. Some of them are very low in protein. They don't contain B-12 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

and have some requirements in place with regards to nutrients like vitamin D and protein and 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 phased by the overall dairy recommendations because I think you can have some dairy within a healthy diet if you're lactose tolerant. And we see that in Mediterranean diets and dash diets and Nordic-style diets. I didn't like the recommendation for butter. I think that was very contradictory to the best evidence that we have out there along with with tallow.

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 fatter than ever. let's stop vilifying fat you know fat has its proper place in a healthy diet and we should be eating

you know we should be eating full fat and not be afraid of fat like that's kind of like a general narrative that's out there and so does that not translate into you know 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 the science was wrong on saturated fat. 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 olive oil. So I think you're right in that a lot of people have been led to believe. that fat's not the problem. You know, we, we, we blamed the wrong thing, but it's, there's,

there's a little bit of nuance or a lot of, 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, you know, 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, um, these guidelines are, are consumer. we're facing and are thinking about the individual and not just a governmental, you know, kind of like policy issuance. So there's a lot of good to be said about that in addition to the fact that, you know, 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, it's 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, in stroke, in chronic high blood pressure, the rise in type 2 diabetes, dementia, Alzheimer's, all of these things derive 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 red meat, 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 and 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. 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 eating too much in general, like overeating essentially. And those foods being overly processed and 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. You're preaching to the choir here.

I wrote a book on this. But I would, the, there's another side in me that feels like, you know, 60 to 70% of the average American's diet is coming from ultra-processed 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 to ask. You know, why can't the average American follow these these guidelines? What's the structural problems? Like, what has to change? Human beings are messy.

Human beings are messy, you know. We're emotional. We eat based on emotion and are, and basically, environment. That's true. And the environment piece 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 Americans diet and to truly, like, reduce the metabolic diseases 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 willpower

to make these decisions. Like human beings are just, we're not very good at that. And this goes back to something Dan 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 arm's length and affordable. And this is all dictated by policy, public health policy. And this gets at the core of like, what Jessica Nurek 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 the strongest predictors of hellspan is zip code. Where do you live? What environment do you personally live in? And I think that was something I didn't appreciate a decade ago, not nearly enough. And so people might be listening and 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 a 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 are not always equal to. 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 Newrick's doing a great job at like really putting a number of these things front and center and saying, hey, you know what, Maha, you're doing a great job at identifying the problem. Ultra-processed foods, food environment. But you know where you could do better? Let's make changes to that structure rather than talk. about things that the individual can do in an environment that's set up for them to fail. Sure. There is, in our case, a grocery store 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 arm's reach or they are unaffordable. And to put it on that person to go against the grain in that environment is not going to solve the problem. So, yeah, 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 Newrick 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. But where, 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 have other countries seen? And so I think there are blueprints out there. And Dan Butner talks about those. But that might be an interesting discussion to kind of dig deeper into in the Yeah, we should, let's get Jessica in here and we'll do it together. I would love that. It would be great. Speaking of which, I do, I just, 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 webpage called realfood. Theproof.com. Because I was inundated 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. You go for eight hours and then it's like, yeah, but okay, what do I eat and what do I not eat? And also they're like in the new dietary guidelines that come out and they seem a little different to what you guys talking about. So I went through 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 addresses some of the myths that we've spoken about. And so there's a very simple almost landing page, realfood dot the proof.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. Your page that you mentioned is incredible. 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.

That is an act of service, my friend. Thank you. So the URL for that again one last time. Realfood. 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 Biel as well. So that could be another resource people might want to check out.

All right, thanks, my friend. Thank you, Rich. Let's do it again soon. All right, peace. Thanks.