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Harry Hayman on the New Food Pyramid: When Policy Contradicts Science and Billions in Public Dollars Hang in the Balance

Harry Hayman on the New Food Pyramid: When Policy Contradicts Science and Billions in Public Dollars Hang in the Balance

The federal government just released new dietary guidelines claiming to offer a “historic reset” for American health. Health and Human Services Secret

ary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stood before cameras on January 7, 2026, unveiling an upside down food pyramid and declaring simply: “Eat real food.” The visual is striking, the messaging is confident, and according to Harry Hayman, Philadelphia food security advocate and producer of the documentary I AM HUNGRY, it’s also a confusing mess that threatens to undermine precisely the populations federal nutrition programs are meant to serve.

For someone who has spent years documenting Philadelphia’s food insecurity crisis, working with organizations like the Feed Philly Coalition and Economy League of Greater Philadelphia, and witnessing firsthand how federal policies shape what appears on school lunch trays and food bank shelves, the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans aren’t abstract policy documents. They’re the framework that determines what millions of children eat at school, what SNAP benefits can purchase, what WIC provides to pregnant mothers and infants, and how billions in public dollars flow through the food system.

The problem, as Harry Hayman and growing chorus of nutrition scientists are pointing out, isn’t just that the pyramid looks different. It’s that depending on which part you read, either nothing changed or everything did. The guidelines maintain long standing limits on saturated fat while simultaneously promoting foods that make staying within those limits nearly impossible. They emphasize whole foods while grouping contradictory items together. They claim scientific rigor while rejecting the two year evidence review conducted by the independent Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. Most troubling: they were written largely by individuals with financial ties to the meat and dairy industries, according to the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

The Visual Contradiction: When Pyramids Don’t Match The Science

The new inverted food pyramid places “Protein, Dairy, and Healthy Fats” at the broad top alongside “Vegetables and Fruits,” with “Whole Grains” relegated to the narrow bottom. At first glance, this appears to dramatically elevate meat and dairy while diminishing grains. The administration frames this as ending the “war on saturated fats” and returning to common sense nutrition focused on “real food.”

But according to analysis by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the visual messaging contradicts the actual written guidelines in significant ways. Dr. Frank Hu, chair of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard Chan School, notes that “there appear to be several contradictions within the DGAs and between the DGAs and the new pyramid. The mixed messages surrounding saturated fat rich foods such as red meat, butter, and beef tallow may lead to confusion and potentially higher intake of saturated fat and increased LDL cholesterol and cardiovascular risk.”

The mathematics reveal the problem starkly. The guidelines maintain the recommendation that no more than 10% of daily calories come from saturated fat. For a 2,000 calorie diet, that’s roughly 22 grams. Yet the guidelines also recommend three servings of full fat dairy daily. If someone follows the examples provided, selecting one 8 ounce cup of whole milk (5 grams saturated fat), three quarters cup of full fat Greek yogurt (6 grams), and 1 ounce of cheddar cheese (6 grams), they’ve already consumed 17 grams of saturated fat before eating anything else. Add the heavily marbled steak prominently featured at the top of the pyramid, and the 10% limit becomes impossible to maintain.

U.S. News analysis by registered dietitians calculated that a single 6 ounce ribeye steak paired with French fries cooked in a tablespoon of beef tallow would exceed the daily saturated fat limit in one meal. This isn’t theoretical abstraction. It’s the practical consequence of guidelines that simultaneously restrict saturated fat while promoting saturated fat rich foods as dietary cornerstones.

Understanding why this matters requires examining what was rejected. The 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee spent two years reviewing nutrition science through a transparent, rigorous process. According to Harvard Chan News interviews with committee members, three Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health faculty served on the panel: Teresa Fung, adjunct professor of nutrition; Edward Giovannucci, professor of nutrition and epidemiology; and Deirdre Tobias, assistant professor in the Department of Nutrition.

The committee underwent extensive background checks on financial, ethical, legal, and criminal conflicts of interest. Members received annual ethics training. Committee meetings were livestreamed. The public had opportunities to provide comments. After two years of evidence synthesis, the committee submitted their Scientific Report. Their key recommendations, based on current nutrition science, included:

  • Emphasizing plant forward dietary patterns rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds
  • Prioritizing plant based proteins like beans, peas, and lentils
  • Including moderate amounts of animal products, with emphasis on fish, poultry, and low fat dairy
  • Reducing consumption of red and processed meats due to links with cardiovascular disease and certain cancers
  • Maintaining limits on saturated fat, added sugars, and sodium

According to Deirdre Tobias in the Harvard Chan News interview, “the biggest deviation from the science is a new prioritization of animal sources within the protein food group, instead of a plant forward pattern. Other critical deviations from science include the recommendation for full fat dairy.”

The Trump administration rejected this report. Instead, according to reporting by U.S. News, the administration appointed an additional panel last year through what documents describe as a “federal contracting process.” This new group produced the supplemental scientific analysis that informed the final guidelines. Research by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine found that of nine scientific review authors, at least seven had industry ties, declaring financial relationships with the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, Texas Beef Council, General Mills, National Dairy Council, and National Pork Board, among other companies.

Harry Hayman’s Concern: School Meals and Federal Food Programs

For Harry Hayman, whose documentary work focuses on food insecurity affecting hundreds of thousands of Philadelphia residents, the implications extend far beyond individual dietary choices. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s press release, these guidelines shape school meals, federal food programs, and billions in public dollars.

The National School Lunch Program serves approximately 30 million children daily. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) provides food assistance to roughly 42 million Americans. The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) serves about 6.7 million participants. These programs don’t suggest optional guidelines. They mandate specific nutritional standards based on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

When the guidelines promote full fat dairy and red meat while maintaining saturated fat limits that those recommendations make impossible to achieve, school nutrition directors face impossible choices. Do they follow the visual pyramid showing steak and whole milk prominently? Or do they follow the saturated fat limits that would require restricting those items? The contradiction isn’t academic. It’s operational chaos for people trying to plan menus for millions of children.

Analysis by the Center for Science in the Public Interest emphasizes that “the guidance on protein and fats in this DGA is, at best, confusing, and, at worst, harmful to the one in four Americans who are directly impacted by the DGA through federal nutrition programs. In addition to contradictory guidance, the document spreads blatant misinformation that ‘healthy fats’ include butter and beef tallow.”

For communities Harry Hayman works with in Philadelphia, where nearly 250,000 residents experience food insecurity and more than 28% of Black Philadelphians face uncertain food access, federal nutrition programs represent critical lifelines. When those programs receive contradictory guidance prioritizing expensive animal proteins over affordable plant proteins, the impact falls disproportionately on the populations least able to absorb increased costs.

The Fiber Gap Nobody Wants To Discuss

One of the subtler but potentially more damaging aspects of the new guidelines involves what they de emphasize: fiber and plant based proteins. According to Stanford Medicine analysis, while whole grains are pictured at the smallest point at the bottom of the new pyramid, the guidelines do instruct Americans to “prioritize fiber rich whole grains.” The visual message, however, contradicts the written guidance.

Americans already consume dramatically insufficient fiber. According to nutrition research, the average American gets about 15 grams of fiber daily. The recommended amount is 25 to 35 grams. This “fiber gap” contributes to digestive issues, cardiovascular disease risk, poor blood sugar control, and various chronic conditions. The best sources of fiber are plant foods: whole grains, legumes, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds.

The new pyramid’s visual diminishment of whole grains while elevating meat and dairy sends the opposite message from what population health data suggests Americans need. As Science News reporting on the guidelines noted through interviews with Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition at New York University, the graphic is “difficult to understand. It looks like you shouldn’t be eating anything at the bottom of the pyramid. I’m not sure that’s what was intended. They’re pretty clear that they want you to eat whole grains. That’s a pretty strong recommendation. But then it’s muddled by the pyramid.”

Similarly, plant based proteins receive inadequate emphasis despite extensive evidence for their health benefits. Beans, lentils, peas, nuts, seeds, and soy products provide protein alongside fiber, vitamins, minerals, and beneficial plant compounds. They’re also significantly less expensive than animal proteins, making them particularly important for food assistance programs serving low income populations. The advisory committee recommended moving legumes to the top of protein recommendations. The final guidelines rejected this, prioritizing animal proteins instead.

The Cultural War Aesthetic Over Public Health Science

Perhaps most troubling is what multiple nutrition experts have characterized as the guidelines’ cultural war framing. The emphasis on ending the “war on saturated fats,” the rhetoric about returning to “real food” and “common sense,” the rejection of previous guidelines despite maintaining most of their quantitative recommendations, and the dramatic visual redesign all suggest positioning these guidelines as ideological statement rather than scientific document.

Reporting by Food Navigator USA noted that HHS calls the new seven page guidelines (compared to the previous 149 pages) the “most significant reset of federal nutrition policy in decades,” aiming to restore “science and common sense” to federal guidance. Yet as Harvard’s analysis documents, “there has not been transparency in who wrote the new DGAs. Although there are documents included in the appendices by named scientists, there is no transparency in the methodology and rigor that was employed, or why certain topics were selected to be relitigated.”

The advisory committee process that was rejected was the transparent one. Committee meetings were livestreamed. Members’ conflicts of interest were publicly disclosed and heavily scrutinized. The public could submit comments. The new process that produced the final guidelines operated largely behind closed doors, appointed reviewers with undisclosed financial ties to industries that benefited from the final recommendations, and provided no public input opportunities.

For Harry Hayman, who has emphasized throughout his food security advocacy the importance of treating food as infrastructure rather than commodity, the cultural framing is particularly frustrating. Food policy should prioritize public health, particularly for vulnerable populations. When guidelines appear designed more to make ideological statements than to reflect nutrition science, the people harmed aren’t political operatives debating on cable news. They’re children eating school lunches, families using SNAP benefits, pregnant mothers receiving WIC assistance.

What Nutrition Experts Are Actually Saying

The professional response to the guidelines has been notably mixed, with praise for some elements and serious concern about others. The American Medical Association, according to reporting by Fox News, applauded the guidelines for “spotlighting the highly processed foods, sugar sweetened beverages and excess sodium that fuel heart disease, diabetes, obesity and other chronic illnesses.”

The American Heart Association, however, expressed concerns that guidance on “salt seasoning and red meat consumption could inadvertently lead consumers to exceed recommended limits for sodium and saturated fat, which are primary drivers of cardiovascular disease.”

The American Society for Nutrition raised concerns that “the work of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee was abandoned, departing from the established scientific review process” in ways that “will undermine confidence in the guidelines and contribute to confusion and distrust.”

The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics stated that some recommendations “are not aligned with the current body of evidence and will create challenges for implementation, particularly across federal nutrition programs that serve millions of Americans.”

Dr. Christopher Gardner, nutrition expert at Stanford University who served on the original advisory committee, told NPR: “I’m very disappointed in the new pyramid that features red meat and saturated fat sources at the very top, as if that’s something to prioritize. It does go against decades and decades of evidence and research.”

A registered dietitian writing in STAT News explained the practical impact: “For those of us in nutrition practice, all of this means spending more time clarifying contradictions than helping people make progress. The result is frustration for both professionals and the public… When that foundation becomes inconsistent, our job shifts from supporting people to untangling contradictions.”

The One Thing Most Experts Agree On

Amid the controversy, one element of the guidelines receives broad support: the emphasis on limiting highly processed foods. The 2025-2030 guidelines explicitly warn against “packaged, prepared, ready to eat, or other foods that are salty or sweet,” describing highly processed foods as products containing refined grains, added sugars, and “long, complicated ingredient lists, including chemical additives (artificial sweeteners, flavor enhancers, artificial colors and emulsifiers).”

This represents genuine progress. Previous guidelines lacked clear language about ultra processed foods, partly because defining them precisely proved challenging. The new guidelines sidestep definitional debates by describing characteristics that consumers can identify: long ingredient lists, chemical additives, added sugars, refined grains.

However, even this creates contradictions. Analysis by U.S. News notes that registered dietitian Carolyn O’Neil viewed the inclusion of a can of green beans and bag of frozen peas in the pyramid as positive additions, since these minimally processed items provide nutrition and convenience. Yet the guidelines’ language about avoiding “packaged, prepared” foods could be interpreted to exclude these items.

The advice to avoid highly processed foods is sound. But without clear parameters, it risks becoming another source of confusion rather than clarity, particularly for lower income families who depend on some shelf stable and frozen items for food security and budget management.

Harry Hayman’s Perspective: Follow The Money and Feed The People

Throughout his work documenting food insecurity in Philadelphia, Harry Hayman has emphasized following the money to understand how food systems actually operate. When asking why corner stores in North Philadelphia have shelves full of processed foods but minimal fresh produce, the answer involves supply chain economics, profit margins, and infrastructure investments. When asking why federal dietary guidelines suddenly prioritize foods from industries whose representatives helped write those guidelines, similar questions emerge.

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine’s documentation of financial ties between guideline authors and meat/dairy industries isn’t conspiracy theory. It’s disclosed information that raises legitimate questions about whose interests the guidelines serve. Dr. Anna Herby, nutrition education specialist with the Physicians Committee, stated: “The Administration has been hoodwinked by scientists working for the dairy and meat industries, rather than for the health of Americans.”

Federal law requires the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee to be “fairly balanced in terms of points of view represented” such that “the advice and recommendations of the advisory committee will not be inappropriately influenced by the appointing authority or any special interest.” The new guidelines circumvented these protections by rejecting the advisory committee’s report and relying on a hastily assembled panel selected through a contracting process with limited transparency.

For Harry Hayman, whose food security work operates at the intersection of public health, economic development, and social justice, these process failures matter as much as the content. When billions in public dollars flow through federal nutrition programs, when millions of children depend on school meals for consistent nutrition, when SNAP and WIC provide critical food access for vulnerable populations, the guidelines shaping those programs must prioritize science over industry interests and public health over political ideology.

The Climate and Sustainability Silence

Another notable absence from discussion of the new guidelines involves environmental sustainability and climate impact. The rejected advisory committee report, according to previous cycles, typically considered environmental factors alongside nutrition. Food production, particularly industrial animal agriculture, generates significant greenhouse gas emissions, requires substantial water and land resources, and contributes to deforestation and biodiversity loss.

According to Science News reporting, Marion Nestle noted that from “a climate change sustainability standpoint, absolutely not” does the evidence support promoting eating more meat and high fat dairy products. Plant forward diets consistently demonstrate lower environmental impact while providing adequate nutrition.

For urban areas like Philadelphia struggling with both food insecurity and climate vulnerability, these connections matter practically not just theoretically. Supporting local plant based agriculture creates jobs, reduces transportation emissions, provides affordable nutrition, and builds community food sovereignty. Federal guidelines that ignore environmental considerations while promoting resource intensive animal agriculture undermine these local resilience efforts.

What Happens Next: Implementation Challenges

The guidelines’ contradictions create immediate practical problems for the institutions that must implement them. School nutrition directors nationwide are already grappling with how to interpret guidance that simultaneously maintains saturated fat limits while promoting foods that make achieving those limits impossible.

SNAP administrators must determine whether the new emphasis on protein means increasing benefits to allow recipients to purchase more expensive animal proteins, or whether the existing benefit levels remain adequate despite the guidelines suggesting higher protein intakes.

WIC program managers must decide whether to shift from low fat dairy to full fat dairy options despite decades of programming emphasizing fat reduction for cardiovascular health.

Food banks and charitable food networks must reconcile the guidelines’ messaging with the reality that donated and surplus food often includes items the guidelines would categorize as problematic, yet which provide essential calories and nutrition to food insecure populations.

According to Center for Science in the Public Interest analysis, recognizing these implementation challenges, CSPI and the Center for Biological Diversity created the “Uncompromised DGA” document illustrating what federal dietary guidance should have looked like if agencies had adhered to their mandate to publish evidence based guidance reflecting the advisory committee’s reviews. More than 20 organizations in health, nutrition, environment, education, and food system fields have endorsed this alternative framework.

The Path Forward: Clarity Over Confusion

Harry Hayman’s call to “read it, subscribe, shop local, repeat” when advocating for PA Preferred and local food systems reflects understanding that systematic change requires informed engagement. The same principle applies to dietary guidelines. While most Americans may never read the full document, the guidelines shape the food environment through federal programs, institutional policies, and public health messaging.

Understanding the contradictions, recognizing the process failures, and demanding better serves everyone, particularly vulnerable populations most dependent on federal nutrition programs. The guidelines’ impact isn’t abstract. It’s the lunch tray at an underfunded urban school, the SNAP benefits determining what a single mother can afford at the grocery store, the WIC package providing formula and food to an infant.

When those programs receive contradictory guidance written partly by individuals with financial ties to industries that benefit from specific recommendations, when transparent scientific processes are rejected in favor of opaque contracting arrangements, when visual messaging contradicts written standards, the result isn’t just policy confusion. It’s public health harm.

The 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans could have been straightforward: emphasize whole foods, prioritize plants, include moderate amounts of lean animal products, limit processed foods, added sugars, and excessive sodium. This aligns with nutrition science, supports public health goals, and provides clear guidance for implementation.

Instead, what emerged is exactly what Harry Hayman characterized: a mess. The helpful kind would acknowledge complexity while providing clarity. This version provides neither, choosing instead to serve multiple masters, political ideology and industry interests among them, while claiming to serve public health.

For the millions of Americans whose meals are shaped by these guidelines through federal nutrition programs, that’s not just disappointing. It’s potentially dangerous. And for advocates like Harry Hayman who have spent years documenting the human cost of food insecurity and systemic failures in food systems, it represents another opportunity squandered to actually address root problems rather than perpetuating them with prettier packaging.

The answers aren’t hidden. The science is clear. What’s required is willingness to prioritize public health over politics, evidence over ideology, and the needs of vulnerable populations over industry interests. Until then, the new food pyramid will remain what it appears to be: mostly vibes, contradictions, and political aesthetics dressed up as science.

Harry Hayman is a Philadelphia based entrepreneur, hospitality leader, and social justice advocate. He serves as producer of the documentary I AM HUNGRY: The Many Faces of Food Insecurity, Senior Fellow for Food Economy and Policy at the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia, and collaborates with the Feed Philly Coalition on food security initiatives. His work examines how policy decisions shape food access, particularly for vulnerable populations in America’s poorest major city. Learn more at harryhayman.com.