[hallole]

The first food group listed is literally meat and dairy. The ordering here is purposeful, too, as they admit. One promo graphic includes a block of butter and a carton explicitly labelled "whole milk." This is a very definite downgrade.

[cmoski]

Butter is king. It should be pictured with a crown, stars and glitter.

Surely whole milk is better than less-than-whole milk?

[keleftheriou]

Why is that a downgrade?

[smaudet]

Dairy/Meat are both inflammatory and overconsumption contributes to a whole host of medical disease.

Some protein is obviously desirable, but the ratios, like anything else in chemistry/biology, are paramount.

I don't think the USA has a problem with under consumption of meat and dairy. If anything, it has a long standing overconsumption problem.

[hallole]

Meat and dairy contain the bulk of the saturated fat in the average diet. It's pretty absurd to imagine a diet in which the largest food group is just meat and dairy, but due to the ordering, that almost seems to be implied.

The saturated fat → LDL-C → heart disease relationship has a lot of evidence and history behind it. A very interesting research project if you needed one. I call this advisory a "downgrade" because heart attack and stroke (among other conditions) are both: 1) downstream of saturated fat consumption, and 2) the most prevalent causes of death among people in the developed world.

[ANarrativeApe]

"The first food group listed is literally meat and dairy."

that's because the pyramid is presented pointy end down.

[tomp]

You're literally just lying.

The first thing shown on the website is - broccoli.

The top of the pyramid includes both protein (meat, cheese) as well as fruits & vegetables.

The reason that meat is shown first is probably that it's the bigger change (it's been demonized in previous versions), whereas vegetables were always prominent.

[simiones]

The first thing on the website is indeed broccoli. But the first thing in the new inverted pyramid, both on the website and in other graphics of it, is meat. In fact, on the website, when you first get to "The New Pyramid", you'll first see only the left half, the one that has meat and other proteins; you'll have to scroll more to see the right half with vegetables and fruit.

[didibus]

The only difference from the previous guidance is that it's suggesting eating more meat and dairy, which would come at the expense of veggies, legumes, nuts and seeds.

To be honest, I don't totally disagree from a practical angle. I think we have to acknowledge that most Americans failed to eat large portions of non-processed veggies, legumes, nuts and seeds. The next best thing might be to tell them, ok, at least if you're going to eat meat and dairy in large portions, make sure it's non-processed.

I've found for myself, it's hard to eat perfectly, but it's easier to replace processed foods and added sugar with simpler whole meats, fish and healthy fats like avocado, eggs, etc. And since those have higher satiety it helps with calorie control and so you avoid eating more snacks and treats which are heavily processed and sugary.

That said, in a purely evidence based health sense, it's not as good as the prior ratios from what I've seen of the research.