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

0:01The Trump administration making over America's food pyramid. For decades, 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. 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.

0:38I 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...

1:02Hey, 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?

1:47Yeah, 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 a 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 % of total calories.

3:11That's not something that's changed. So, you 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.

4:03It 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.

4:49And so there seems to be a sort of inherent conflict between this messaging of maintaining your intake of saturated fat under 10 % 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 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 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.

5:39And also Ty Beal, 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.

6:37And 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. Mm-hmm. 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 ribeye, 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.

7:21Right, 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 the administration takes the recommendations from this committee, and that's what ends up in these recommendations.

8:08In 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 um so what do you make of that disconnect between the committee report and the decisions that were made regarding those aspects of the of the inverted pyramid that are kind of anathema to the recommendations yeah well the current administration has 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.

9:24And 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 dash pescatarian style dietary patterns with a lot of fiber and unsaturated 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 Beal, and that group wrote the guidelines, but they didn't even write the guidelines.

10:10They just hand over their advisory piece and the 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 in my understanding of the broader literature i i have to think that there there are um there are reasons beyond public health that have influenced that set of recommendations and what would those be simon i mean we would we'd 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.

11:01So, let's maintain - There's also the personal preferences of people like RFK Jr. who are at the helm of this. Are there not? Totally. And he may, 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. And - There's no scientific evidence-based rationale for promoting beef tallow. No. And if you go back and read the wording of the healthy fat section in that paper, at year one, nutrition scientists would be able to pick up the errors that were in there. It specifically says, eat more oils rich in essential fats like olive oil.

11:47Now, 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, you'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 in any sentence at all call out seed oils and tell people recommend against their consumption because I 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 will you won't see any commentary on them despite how much of a big deal RFK Jr.

12:53made 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 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 curse, 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.

13:40every 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. 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 american's diet is shaped by their environment, disparity in income, these social determinants of health.

14:38And 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 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.

15:17It'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 hyperpalatable, very energy dense delicious foods that are low fat and are convenient and are 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 And if anything, you see health move in the direction that was not intended.

16:01So 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, there's a whole domino effect that occurs from the establishment of these guidelines into food procurement systems, et cetera, and the food that ends up on your kid's plate at lunch every day. That's right.

16:44and 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 gonna be 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 the benefit that you get from eating less of something is is often yes you're reducing your exposure of whatever was in that food but it's 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 and what nutritional properties are 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 you It's like so obvious, right?

18:02But 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 and past. Yeah, I agree with that. I think, I mean, you can't fault their PR campaign.

18:48The 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. Here is the dilemma. When you choose headphones, you usually have to decide. Do you want to be fully immersed in what you're listening to? Or do you need to stay aware of what's going on around you? Well, most earbuds force you into one camp or the other. But Shox has figured out how to bridge that gap with the new OpenFit Pro. It's their first open-ear headphone with open-ear noise reduction.

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21:53One 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 uh the conversation is 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 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 intakes are i'm sure it far exceeds that it's at about 1.2 grams per kilogram so so it's right in that range it's right in that range so so the question that i would throw out to all of us is what explains sarcopenia today the fact that 30 percent of of uh 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's already there but we we're spending 95 of the oxygen is given to this 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 analyses 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 and you know 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.

24:35But 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 uh i think that the 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 and poultry the two main sources of of animal protein in the in the american diet and in doing so people will would have still continued to to consume enough protein but at the same time reducing saturated fat increasing healthy unsaturated fats increasing fiber consumption.

25:44So 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 And we're just really not.

26:33And 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, you know, things like cancer and in cardiovascular disease.

27:25And 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 gonna 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 gonna conclude from that? I think most people will double down on red meat based on what those new guidelines look like.

27:56If 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 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 diet quality improvement i i do think that the 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 the the common assumption yeah that's the It's a 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.

29:21These are the things that I think people will - Bioavailable, digestible, et cetera. 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 the amino acid kind of makeup superior, more complete, but then plant protein contains fiber and other anti-nutrients, 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 gonna 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 gonna do and so i actually empathize and i think that that is a logical kind of place to land when you hear all 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 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 what i'll say is that you know researchers like stewart phillips who is you know one of the main protein researchers in the world, Luke Van Loon.

31:21I've had both on my show several times. The old kind of way of thinking about protein was that animal protein is more anabolic, okay, before they had run enough studies to test this. And then over time, there's been these clinical trials, first looking at healthy adults, you know, people aged in their 30s and 40s, and putting one group on a completely plant-based diet where 100 % of the protein is coming from plants, and the other group on an omnivorous diet representative of american style diet in terms of where protein's 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 muscle size and muscle strength so this idea of bioavailability and amino acid makeup it's not affecting those outcomes that we care about.

32:16There 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 the Netherlands.

32:58Great guy. You should have him on the show. I will. Yeah, I had him on last year. Anybody you recommend him having on? He is, 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 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 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.

33:42And 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 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?

34:23This is a great question. 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 on delayed anabolic response right and so they 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 can 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 they 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 omnivorous diet and the vegan diet, 1.1 grams of protein per kilogram.

36:00That's the intake they looked at. And 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.