Ep 209 Dietary Guidelines Part 2: Why is there protein in everything?

If you’ve come across the latest dietary guidelines, a few things may have caught your attention: a big ol’ steak front and center in the new “inverted pyramid”, beef tallow and butter recommended as “healthy” fats, a declaration that the war on protein is ending. “Since when have we been at war with protein?” you may reasonably ask. In part 2 of our episodes on dietary guidelines, we get to the bottom of the latest iteration of these guidelines and investigate which changes are good (there are a few), which are bad (definitely a few there), and which are somewhere in between. Then we explore what science has actually shown about what constitutes a “healthy” diet. Tune in for a lively discussion that features lots of complaining about protein-enriched products, exasperated sighs, and a few shocking revelations about “the American diet.” Support this podcast by shopping our latest sponsor deals and promotions at this link: https://bit.ly/3WwtIAu See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  This is exactly right.

• 0:06Speaker 01

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• 1:03Speaker 00

  Hey, I'm Niall Rogers. This fall, I'll be driving across the country, meeting some of today's coolest and most fascinating artists. We'll explore the stories before the moments that changed everything. Because every musician remembers the moment where it all began. Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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• 2:06Speaker 01

  Restoring Science and Common Sense. Every American deserves to be healthy, but too many Americans are sick and don't know why. That is because their government has been unwilling to tell them the truth. For decades, the US government has recommended and incentivized low-quality, highly-processed foods and drug interventions instead of prevention. Under the leadership of President Trump, the government is now going to tell Americans the truth. Today, the White House released the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2025 to 2030, the most significant reset of federal nutrition policy in decades.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Under President Trump's leadership, common sense, scientific integrity, and accountability have been restored to federal food and health policy. For decades, the Dietary Guidelines favored corporate interests over common sense, science-driven advice to improve the health of Americans. That ends today. The new Dietary Guidelines call for prioritizing high-quality protein, healthy fats, fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, and avoiding highly-processed foods and refined carbohydrates.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  Aaron.

• 4:04Speaker 03

  Okay. So, ooh, my face made some...

• 4:09Speaker 01

  Some faces during that? That was my dramatic rendition of an unadulterated, uncut first two paragraphs of the USDA's fact sheet that they released when they released these new dietary guidelines. We'll have a link to it on our website and it was completely uncut.

• 4:29Speaker 03

  It cracks me up because like the whole framing this as a complete reset of everything. And I'm like, this is just like the 11th version of a textbook with like very little changes.

• 4:40Speaker 01

  Very little changes. And to, to imply that the changes that they have made are in any way based in science in a way that previous ones weren't is false. To imply that they are not backed by industry interests is also false. So it's like, we'll get into all of it today.

• 4:57Speaker 03

  Oh, I'm excited for this episode, Erin.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  Me too.

• 5:01Speaker 03

  Hi, I'm Erin Welsh.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  And I'm Erin Allman Updike.

• 5:04Speaker 03

  And this is This Podcast Will Kill You.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  Today, we're talking about the dietary guidelines, part two.

• 5:11Speaker 03

  Part two. Part two.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  Bringing, bringing back the food pyramid.

• 5:17Speaker 03

  I think this is going to be a very interesting discussion of rhetoric and just branding. Like so much of this is branding, even looking at the design of the pyramid, which like I didn't talk about that last week, but like there has been a lot of intention behind how this information is presented, committees on committees on committees of like, how do we turn this, do we do a pyramid? Should we add stairs? Should we do an upside down triangle? Like whatever, I guess triangles can't be upside down, but like.

• 5:48Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 5:49Speaker 03

  Yeah. And it's just, wow.

• 5:52Speaker 01

  I know. Well, and it's interesting too, because historically the like dietary guidelines for Americans document has been this like pretty large, you know, hefty document that's geared towards professionals, you know, nutrition experts and people who are making the decisions about things and not, not the same document that is necessarily geared towards general public where then they take those dietary guidelines, the DGA, and then make a food pyramid. Make this public facing, you know, information.

• 6:21Speaker 03

  Infographic thing.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, this time it's like, we got it. It's all in one. It's just this very short, a few pages. And this is the dietary guidelines. It is public facing. And so they've kind of just wrapped it all up in one, which is also interesting in and of itself.

• 6:35Speaker 03

  It is. Oh, there's so much good stuff today.

• 6:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 6:39Speaker 03

  There's so much good stuff. But first.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  It's quarantine time.

• 6:42Speaker 03

  It is. What are we drinking again, Erin?

• 6:46Speaker 01

  We're drinking your daily apple.

• 6:48Speaker 03

  We are. It's a pretty simple beverage. It's got apple juice, pomegranate juice, lemon juice, sparkling water. There you go.

• 6:57Speaker 01

  Delish, refreshing. We'll post the full recipe, as if you need one, on our website, thispodcastwithkelly.com, and all of our social media. So make sure that you're following us there. You know, so you don't miss it.

• 7:09Speaker 03

  Do it. On our website, you can find a whole suite of things. If you're looking for them, you can find sources, you can find transcripts, you can find links to merch, links to bookshop.org affiliate page, our Goodreads list, music by Bloodmobile, contact us form, a submit your first hand account form, and perhaps a few other tidbits in there if you're, you know, excited to explore. Please have at it.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  Rate, review, and subscribe on your favorite podcatcher or YouTube. If you are into a video version, we have it. Did you know that?

• 7:44Speaker 03

  We've got it.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  We're there.

• 7:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, maybe you're already watching us, in which case, hi.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  Hi. Nice to see you.

• 7:49Speaker 03

  Great to see you.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  Okay, shall we get into this week's episode, Erin?

• 7:55Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  Okay, we'll take a break and then dive in.

• 7:59Speaker 01

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• 8:44Speaker 01

  Visit O'Keefe'sCompany.com today. That's O-K-E-E-F-F-E-S company.com for guaranteed relief. O'Keefe's Working Hands. Yeah, it works.

• 8:57Speaker 00

  Hey, it's Niall Rogers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by my friend, John Ledge. What still makes you just sit down at the piano?

• 9:20Speaker 04

  If you sat down at 9:00 a.m. and then at noon, you had a full song that you recorded and put in your voice recorder or you recorded at your studio, you just created something brand new that didn't exist when you woke up. What a beautiful feeling it is. I'm always excited to write something new. I've been writing for Broadway, which has been a new challenge with new collaborators and amazing performers who are triple threats, who can sing and dance and act and do all these amazing things. And I want to keep feeling that. And so that means not resting on my laurels, going out there and continuing to create something new.

• 9:55Speaker 00

  Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  If anyone missed last week's episode, part one of this two-part series, Aaron, you walked us through The good, the bad, and the ugly, really,

• 10:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  of how we got to be here where we are today. So I think we all understand a lot more about where the concept of these dietary guidelines really comes from and the issues that have always been present in the creation of the dietary guidelines for America. And this is a very America-centric couple of episodes, but I will talk about global dietary guidelines today as well. But today's episode, I am mostly focused on these newest dietary guidelines that came out in January 2026. And what I want to walk through is why it is that they've made such headlines. Like, when was the last time we ever even heard about them being updated? Did you know they were updated in 2020?

• 11:13Speaker 03

  No.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  Because they were. Of course, they are every five years. Why are we hearing so much more about this upside-down pyramid than we did the debut of MyPlate back in 2011?

• 11:24Speaker 03

  MyPlate, still. Can't believe I missed a whole era of dietary guidelines.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  Right. And of course, I think that part of this is down to the time in which we are currently living in, with RFK Jr. being the head of the Department of Health and Human Services, who made it known very clearly and very loudly that he was going to overhaul these guidelines.

• 11:46Speaker 03

  Right.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  And I think that in some ways, the kind of nutrition community, the wider medical community, has been bracing for this. What is it going to look like? And it's very clear that Maha and the Maha kind of ideals and ideology has had a very huge hand in shaping these guidelines.

• 12:05Speaker 03

  You know, I was thinking about, like, the Super Bowl commercial with Mike Tyson.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  It's, Erin, I have so many feelings about it, and I'm not even going to get deep into it.

• 12:16Speaker 03

  No, I know. But it's just like, it's funny, because, like you said, we didn't, like, there weren't, or maybe there were, and I just missed them because they were so not as ridiculous, like, so unridiculous compared to that. I genuinely thought that I was watching, like, a spoof.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  A spoof thing, like it came up and I was like- Right, like an SNL skit? Yeah, like a 30 Rock thing. I was like, what is happening? And so it is really interesting, the drive for publicity and publicizing this, these guidelines. And I think that's one of the big, big differences that we're seeing, like already off the bat, is the way that these guidelines are being marketed, the way that they're being talked about, the vibes behind them is like totally, totally different than anything that we've seen before. Yeah. It's a lot. And there is a lot that I think that these guidelines kind of bring up that are part of larger discussions. And we don't have time for those larger discussions today. So what I am going to focus on for this episode is how the most recent guidelines,

• 13:15Speaker 01

  this upside down food pyramid, if we're calling it that, what are the real key differences between these dietary guidelines and every other set of guidelines that has changed minimally over the last several decades? There's four key differences that I'm going to kind of go through, some of which are not based at all in science and some of which are really probably good recommendations and some of which are somewhere in between. And then we'll compare the current food guidelines now that exist in the US to what guidelines actually look like across the globe. Like, how different are these new recommendations from global recommendations? I'm so excited for that.

• 13:55Speaker 01

  It's gonna be great. How are Americans doing on eating according to these guidelines? If we're falling short, in what areas are we falling short and why? What are the barriers that we see? Fiber. And yes, fiber is the answer. And finally, the question that you kind of ended us with last week, Erin, is does any of this matter? Who is going to be affected by these changes besides our global reputation? Ready? Oh, yeah. So, we're gonna also go good, bad, and ugly. Or like, I'm gonna start with like probably beneficial changes, somewhat maybe neutral changes, and then baseless changes that are probably harmful to our health. Wonder which those are. I can't wait to tell you.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  So, the first thing to know is that they really are not that different from previous iterations.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  Guidelines for forever have emphasized the importance of whole grains, whole fruits and vegetables, limiting added sugar, limiting sodium, and limiting our saturated fat to less than 10% of our total calories. That has not changed at all. Nope. These guidelines, similar to the guidelines from 2020 as well, also include a one-pager on nutrition information geared towards infants and toddlers, which is quite well put together and very, very similar to the 2020 guidelines. Right. Okay. But there are a few big changes, like I said, four, that we're going to go through.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  So the first big change is that this is the first Dietary Guidelines for Americans to specifically emphasize that we should be avoiding consumption of, quote, "highly processed, packaged, prepared, ready to eat," unquote, foods, or other snacky foods. And they list specifically chips, cookies, candy, as the types of foods they're talking about. And they emphasize the need to prioritize what they call nutrient-dense foods. They go so far as to recommend that no amount of added sugars or non-nutritive sweeteners is needed or recommended in a diet.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  And multiple times in different sections of these guidelines, they call out refined grains, added sugar, and added salt or sodium as something that we should be avoiding, including things like sugar-sweetened beverages, which they have been railing against for a very long time now, and fruit juices. I think their stance against fruit juices is a bit different than previous ones. They also say, and I think this is really interesting, that if you're going to be eating packaged or snacky foods, to look for ones that meet FDA, quote-unquote, "healthy" claim limits.

• 16:54Speaker 01

  And this is a category that exists. It was like updated in 2024, these like limits on what should constitute a quote unquote healthy food. No one knows what those are.

• 17:05Speaker 03

  What? I've never heard of this. Okay.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  No, of course you haven't. No one's heard of it. And the thing is that like this is a theoretical category kind of that exists, but there's no like labeling for it. So there's no way that that companies can label a food as quote unquote healthy and that you know as a consumer, it is sticking to an actual category that the FDA has made. Like that has been proposed, but right now it does not exist. So healthy limits, we don't really know exactly what those are. Okay?

• 17:35Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  They list in the dietary guidelines, some specific limits on the amounts of added sugar that should be in a certain amount of ounces of food as part of this healthy claim. But that's it. It's only a limit on sugar, not on anything else saturated fat or sodium or anything.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  So this is a potentially beneficial change. However, it does kind of merit a bit more nuance than what the guidelines are giving it.

• 18:08Speaker 03

  Yeah. Okay. We're going to talk about processed foods, I think someday.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  We have to because an in-depth look on what processed foods or they call them highly processed foods and that's not a thing that exists. Like it's not a category of of processing.

• 18:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  There is a classification system called the NOVA Classification System that lists minimally processed and processed and ultra-processed foods.

• 18:36Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  But highly processed is not technically a term. Now, is that semantics? A little bit. But the problem is that To really like get at the idea of food processing, you have to like, what is it that we're trying to get at here?

• 18:52Speaker 03

  Right, because like it's it's a little bit like you know it when you see it like, yes, we know that certain things are processed, but that are not inherently bad because of that processing.

• 19:03Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 19:04Speaker 03

  Most of our food is processed.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 19:06Speaker 03

  But like, yeah, but to say that and then say, well, then that means all processed food is fine, or all processed food is bad. Both of those things are not are lacking the nuance that is impactful for dietary health.

• 19:18Speaker 01

  They're oversimplifications on both, like both ends of the spectrum, essentially.

• 19:23Speaker 03

  And people use them in both ways where it's like,

• 19:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:25Speaker 03

  Well, no, there are highly clearly highly processed foods that are clearly not

• 19:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:31Speaker 03

  good for you.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  No, no one thinks that Cheetos are a health food.

• 19:36Speaker 03

  Right.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  You know, like,

• 19:37Speaker 03

  Not to name names, but,

• 19:38Speaker 01

  Not to name names, but I don't think anyone is out there eating Cheetos thinking that they're getting nutrient-dense foods in their diet.

• 19:46Speaker 03

  I mean, but like, then there's like baked Cheetos as like, here's a healthy option.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  Erin, don't get me started, okay?

• 19:52Speaker 03

  Again, it's the whole health washing.

• 19:53Speaker 01

  And that's a health washing and a marketing and that that's kind of a separate issue, right? But it is part of this. And the thing is that like, none of these types of foods that they are really trying to get at here, right? Because what they're trying to get at is avoiding sugared sweetened beverages, refined, highly processed carbohydrates and other foods that have a lot of added sugars, added sodium and tend to be high in saturated fats. None of these types of foods were recommended by any means in previous guidelines.

• 20:25Speaker 03

  Right.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  And scientific reports, again, the reports that are coming out of the DGAC, the committee who's making these initial recommendations that go to the DGA, they have recommended limiting them to various degrees. Previous guidelines have never explicitly discouraged the consumption of these foods. They've been, we've been recommended to avoid added sugars, to limit our amounts of added sugars and things like that. So it's really kind of the emphasis and the explicitness of this recommendation that's different.

• 21:02Speaker 03

  It's interesting too, to see whether there will be an impact. And so you're right, like this seems like theoretically a step in the right direction, but how is it going to translate to purchasing?

• 21:13Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. And I think that that theoretical part is so important because it's also the case that these highly processed, I'm going to call them what they actually are, which is ultra-processed foods and processed foods in general, tend to be less expensive. They tend to be more available, especially in low-income areas. They are going to be more shelf-stable. Many times they're fortified with a lot of vitamins and minerals that people might be lacking. And so to just blanket statement discourage all processed foods is really doing a disservice if we're not also changing the way that we regulate our foods, the way that we label our foods, and the way that we provide access to foods for people. And none of that is changing with these dietary guidelines.

• 21:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, all it's going to do, well, no, not all it's going to do. One of the things that's going to do is change the way that foods market themselves to no longer be highly processed, like the new naked Doritos or whatever. Suddenly that's not an ultra-processed food? Like, you're kidding me.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  Right. And that, what that also does is it contributes to a level of stigma or shame associated with certain foods that we then associated.

• 22:20Speaker 03

  Guilty pleasures.

• 22:21Speaker 01

  Exactly. And that contributes to issues of disordered eating as well as just discrimination. Like, it's, we could keep going.

• 22:28Speaker 03

  A can of worms? That is like a Costco-sized can of worms.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  Yes, they go even further, though, in this like section where they talk about avoiding highly processed foods, because they also specifically talk about limiting artificial food dyes. We know that they're railing against those, as well as preservatives, non-nutritives, sweeteners. And if you haven't listened to our food dyes episode, we have a way deep dive on that. But the fact is, there really isn't a ton of data to support these recommendations. There really isn't. Like, we don't have data to say that we need to be avoiding X, Y, and Z preservatives, or for what reason, or that artificial food dyes are in any way less safe than so-called natural food dyes, which, again, they are just lifting restrictions

• 23:13Speaker 01

  on the ability to license and use various forms of quote-unquote "natural-derived"

• 23:20Speaker 03

  I mean, like, food dyes are not necessary, period.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  No, right. And none of this, like, so that part is really not based in data, but it's lumped into this idea of avoiding highly-processed foods. So, again, that's a can of worms, and that's like, if there is a change that could potentially be for the better, that might be it. So, moving on. Now, dairy has been, I think, contentious in guidelines for years. And for good reason.

• 23:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  Because, honestly, the bottom line is that none of us, over the age of 12 months, need any form of dairy to survive as a species. 75% of the global population is lactose intolerant as adults and cannot consume dairy. Period. Dairy is a good source of calcium. It has quite a lot of calcium in it, and 46% of Americans don't get enough calcium. Dairy in this country has to be fortified with vitamin D, and many of us don't get enough vitamin D. And then dairy contains protein, and it is high in saturated fat, if you are drinking whole-fat dairy.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  But for a long time, the guidelines not only emphasized like the need for dairy. Dairy was a whole owned food group, okay, which it still is. It is a front page recommendation on these guidelines. Of course it is. Before whole grains, before anything. But every other guideline in the past has emphasized the need to consume low fat dairy. They have recommended specifically low fat dairy items. And that is because of the data surrounding saturated fat intake.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  And the truth is that the more data that we have gotten to specifically look at dairy, low fat dairy versus full fat dairy, is that the data doesn't really bear out the idea that low fat dairy is truly any healthier when it comes to cardiovascular disease, cholesterol, cardiovascular mortality, those kinds of things. So whether you're consuming low fat milk or skim milk or whole milk, the data, like the newer data, it's true, doesn't really, like, it doesn't bear out that whole milk is truly worse than low fat. Okay? Okay.

• 25:46Speaker 01

  Where it does make a difference is that whole milk dairy, which is just as processed as low fat because they take out the fat and put it back in, but it is going to have more calories and it is going to have more saturated fat. And so if you're consuming that, you probably need to reduce the amounts that you're drinking in order to stay within whatever your calorie limits are going to be for the day, right? Okay. But the new guidelines on this very first page specifically recommend consuming whole fat, full fat dairy. Yeah. They don't say like, pick a dairy of your choice. They specifically say you should be consuming whole fat dairy. There's no data to support that.

• 26:30Speaker 03

  Right.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  Uh, necessarily. And again, there's no data that says that anyone needs to be consuming dairy whatsoever. And all of the previous guidelines have erred, at least the way that they have framed it, have erred on the side of caution, saying because we know the risks of saturated fat, even though we don't have a strong indication that low-fat dairy is substantially healthier or substantially more safe a choice than whole milk, we should err on the side of caution and recommend low-fat options to people.

• 27:00Speaker 03

  Okay. I think I'm confused a little bit. Okay.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  Give it to me.

• 27:05Speaker 03

  So these studies, and this might not be like an answerable question, but like these studies that are showing that there's not necessarily a relationship, a strong relationship between whole milk or whole-fat milk or skim milk or whatever and health. Is that if quantities are equal, is that if, you know, like?

• 27:26Speaker 01

  It's a great question. Our nutrition is tough, right?

• 27:29Speaker 03

  It is really tough.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  It's really, most of them are just based on like changing a recommendation. So in like, for example, dash diet studies, which is like the dietary approaches to stopping hypertension, or like Mediterranean diet studies where they have either allowed participants to have milk, whether they've recommended low-fat milk or recommended whole milk. Are they restricting how much people are drinking? Probably not. So people are probably drinking however much milk they're going to drink.

• 27:52Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  And so, but in those, when they have kind of allowed people more leniency and switching from low-fat to whole-fat and things like that, there isn't that big of a difference, really. It's true.

• 28:05Speaker 03

  And it is interesting too, in the context of thinking about servings and like recommended servings. So it's like, we're now recommending any type of fat, like dairy fat amount versus?

• 28:16Speaker 01

  Well, specifically, we're actually recommending whole fat.

• 28:19Speaker 03

  Okay, well, there you go.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  But.

• 28:20Speaker 03

  But I mean, like, does that, yeah, it's just, I think it's. The reason I say it's unanswerable is because like it's just, there is so much, there's lack of clarity in all of this and what the impact is. And I think it is really difficult to take data and then translate that to advice.

• 28:38Speaker 01

  Yes, it is. It's really, really hard. But that is a big, that is a change, a pretty, a pretty good sized change that we see in these newest guidelines. Is the switch to emphasize the need to consume whole fat dairy products. As like a very explicit recommendation. Okay?

• 28:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, sure.

• 28:58Speaker 01

  Next.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  Next is, I think the one that you're probably most excited about, Erin? The war on protein.

• 29:07Speaker 03

  Yeah. I'm waging this war. I'm starting now. I'm fighting back against the onslaught of protein in the grocery store.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  The guidelines on, on realfood.gov, which is where you can find these guidelines, they really do specifically say that they are ending the war on protein.

• 29:27Speaker 03

  As someone who lived through the 90s and the 2000s and the Atkins diet, I didn't realize that we were in a war.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  I'll tell you what I think the war actually is, Erin.

• 29:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  Let me, let me get through it.

• 29:40Speaker 03

  The war on beef? Okay, go on.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah, listen. So this version of the dietary guidelines really puts protein on a huge pedestal. And it does so in two ways that are different from prior guidelines and not based in nutrition research or data. So first, these guidelines emphasize over and over again, both visually and in the text itself, a specific and explicit recommendation to consume your protein primarily from animal sources.

• 30:10Speaker 03

  Right. I can picture this steak in that.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  This steak.

• 30:13Speaker 03

  In that pyramid, yeah.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  Ah, it's huge. They have a huge whole steak, an entire turkey, a package of ground beef, a chunk of raw salmon, and a carton of whole milk, all to represent your protein sources, okay? They also, in the text, emphasize eggs, poultry, seafood, and red meat. And then later, later down the line, say like, you can get it from vegetable sources too, but don't you dare be vegetarian or vegan, or you'll definitely end up deficient. There's like a whole section on that.

• 30:38Speaker 03

  Great.

• 30:39Speaker 01

  The nutrition data that we have.

• 30:43Speaker 01

  Rife with biases and things and limited as all nutrition data is, all of the nutrition data that we do have point to plant sources of protein being associated with lower disease risks, lower mortality, better cardiovascular outcomes than animal proteins.

• 31:03Speaker 03

  So that is what Atwater basically said. I mean, Atwater was like, get your protein however you can get your protein.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 31:12Speaker 03

  Animal, plant, whatever. And then at least 70 years ago, it was known that plant protein was associated with lower incidence of chronic disease.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yes, yes. Plant proteins are sufficient in terms of getting us enough quality of protein. And they, again, reduce cardiovascular disease risk, like over and over and over again in studies. Now, in these newest guidelines where they are making these recommendations, they don't provide any quantitative data to actually like prove or like any data to support this idea that animal proteins are actually healthier in any way, shape, or form. Like, they don't even try to really back this up with any quantitative data.

• 32:00Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 32:01Speaker 01

  And, and we're going to get more into this in a second, but meat, especially red meat, like the giant steak that they have right there in the front of the triangle, is much higher in saturated fat than plant-based proteins. And we have decades of data. This is where our nutrition data is the strongest. Reducing saturated fat is beneficial for your cardiovascular health. Also, like, they don't even mention in these guidelines how strong of associations they are between red meat and processed meats and the fact that they're carcinogens, right?

• 32:34Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 32:34Speaker 01

  These are carcinogenic foods and associated with an increased risk of cancer. None of this is addressed in these guidelines. They just really focus on the need to consume animal-based protein. And the other thing that they specify, for the first time in dietary guidelines, is a protein goal of 1.2 to 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day. So for a 100-kilogram person, we're talking 120 to 160 grams of protein.

• 33:04Speaker 03

  What's that in pounds?

• 33:05Speaker 01

  It's... Oh, my God. I don't know. 2.2, so that would be like 220 pounds? Okay, okay. Wow, pull that out. The current dietary reference intakes, which is separate from these DGAs, but that's getting into semantics. The recommendation is a goal of 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight. So this is up to double, like up to doubling what the recommended target protein intake is. And the current evidence is that the vast majority of Americans, with some exceptions for maybe older adults, are getting about 1 gram per kilogram of protein. We're already meeting what the previous goals are.

• 33:48Speaker 01

  We are not deficient in protein whatsoever. What would protein deficiency look like? So protein deficiency can result in muscle wasting and things like that, for sure. And it's a very real concern if you didn't have access to protein. And there's some data that in older Americans, especially like over 70, 75, that having a protein deficit is associated with increased frailty and that's a fall risk and things like that. But that's only in a subset of older Americans. The vast majority of everyone else is getting plenty of protein to support our daily needs and to support our bodily functions. The evidence that they cite,

• 34:33Speaker 01

  that they present in these guidelines to actually support this idea that we need more protein, are a few studies, some of which show that with a high protein diet, people have more weight loss. That's it. They don't have any data to show that more protein is better for cardiovascular disease, for diabetes, for mortality, for cancer, for anything else. Just a few short-term studies, 68% of these 30 studies showed decrease in one weight-related metric, like BMI or waist circumference or something like that. So there's really no data to support this idea that we need more protein

• 35:17Speaker 01

  than what we're already getting. And like excess dietary protein ends up converted into fat, which is going to increase your visceral adiposity. And that's the type of fat that puts people at risk of diabetes and metabolic disease.

• 35:29Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 35:29Speaker 01

  There's some evidence that increasing your protein intake, if you are doing intensive strength and resistance training, can increase your muscle mass. But they're not like, that's a separate subset. And that's not the general population because if we were all doing more strength training, that would be great for everyone, but we're not as a whole.

• 35:49Speaker 03

  Okay, so what does this mean for, we should do an episode on protein. We really should. I've been wanting to do the keto diet for a long time.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 35:57Speaker 03

  But what does this mean for the fact that like, you know, we're seeing this now? How long has this been building, this war on protein rhetoric? Again, I still come back to the protein in every product that you see these days. Like, that's like the newest trend.

• 36:15Speaker 01

  It is.

• 36:16Speaker 03

  And what are the implications of that trend? Like, what are the outcomes going to be?

• 36:20Speaker 01

  It's a great question. We don't know.

• 36:22Speaker 03

  Will there be?

• 36:22Speaker 01

  It's a really great question, though. Because this is, I mean, this sets us up for the protein marketing to be like, heck, yes, thank you so much for doing this, right? We're already here. Now look at us. We're in the guidelines, right? Despite the fact that they're all ultra-processed foods.

• 36:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  Right?

• 36:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:39Speaker 01

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• 37:37Speaker 00

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• 37:58Speaker 05

  I'm like a kid when I play music and I make music and I'm constantly asking questions. You know, whether it's an instrument I haven't played, or it's a melody that seems foreign. You know this, every night you play a show and it's the same set, but it's not the same show. At a certain point, your brain kind of goes on autopilot. When I'm in the studio, or if I'm making music, that's where that curiosity kind of comes back, you know? I haven't lost it yet, but I'm also on my sophomore album, so, and you, you obviously are an expert here.

• 38:24Speaker 00

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• 38:46Speaker 01

  The war on protein, from what I can tell, is that the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, who published the initial recommendations that they did not use to make these new guidelines, specifically said that we need to have an emphasis on plant-based proteins. And they had the audacity to suggest that beans, peas, and lentils should be taken out of the vegetables group and grouped with the proteins group.

• 39:16Speaker 03

  Which is wild, because historically, that's where it has been, too.

• 39:19Speaker 01

  Listen.

• 39:20Speaker 03

  Beans were with meat, legumes were with meat, historically, since the early days.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  Yes, but peas, Erin, they're green.

• 39:29Speaker 03

  I wonder when it switched. Okay, okay.

• 39:31Speaker 01

  That's the war. That's, that is the war.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  That's the war on protein. I'm not done.

• 39:37Speaker 03

  Okay, yeah.

• 39:39Speaker 01

  The last, and I think the most egregious change, the ones that people are really kind of up in arms about, is the changes in terms of the recommendations on fat. And I hinted at this already.

• 39:48Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 39:49Speaker 01

  So, just like every other guideline forever, these guidelines explicitly say that we should be limiting our total saturated fat intake to less than 10% of our diet. That has not changed.

• 40:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:04Speaker 01

  Because the data to support that is so strong, that has not changed. However, the new guidelines say that we should be incorporating healthy fats, quote unquote, healthy fats, and they repeatedly list butter and beef tallow many times as options for healthy fats. These fats are 50% saturated fat compared to liquid fats like olive oils, vegetable oils, seed oils, which are like 10% saturated fat. The guidance on saturated fat for years has been that saturated fat increases our LDL cholesterol, which is the type of cholesterol associated with cardiovascular disease, and saturated fat intake increases cardiovascular

• 40:49Speaker 01

  disease and mortality from cardiovascular disease. The data is like as strong as it gets when it comes to nutrition data. And there are so, so much data that shows that reducing our saturated fat specifically in these ways, one, by replacing saturated fats like butter and lard and beef tallow with plant-based fats like olive oil, vegetable oil, seed oils, improves people's lipid profiles and reduces cardiovascular disease.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  And number two, replacing animal-based sources of saturated fat, including red meat and white meat and dairy products with plant-based sources of proteins like legumes and whole grains and vegetables reduces cardiovascular disease. These are not new data. These are longstanding. So these recommendations and the lumping of these sources of highly saturated fat as a healthy option is not based in data whatsoever. And to still say like, we need to be eating animal-based protein. We need to be eating whole fat dairy products. We need to be using butter as our healthy fat, but we should be limiting our saturated

• 42:03Speaker 01

  fat intake to 10% of our diet. Like, that's not feasible. You can't do all of that.

• 42:09Speaker 03

  It's contradictory. And I think it's like, it's a little by design because it's like providing lip service to multiple different things at once without revealing what the true intention behind it is, if there is one. Like, can there be an aligned goal? Or is it just like word vomit from RFK?

• 42:26Speaker 01

  From word vomit mouths.

• 42:27Speaker 03

  From someone who's a pro.

• 42:29Speaker 01

  And really, like, the way that they made these guidelines is also different than what you walked us through, Erin, of the typical how these dietary guidelines are made. And you told us last week that there has always been black boxes. There have always been concerns about industry ties. And there has always been a question of like, how do these dietary guidelines committee recommendations actually get turned into the DGA? And so what's kind of interesting is that in some ways, the way that they went about this was more transparent.

• 43:02Speaker 03

  More, yeah, that the whole checklist of like, these are, this is what the committee recommended, and here's what we did.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  Here's what we did. We ignored over 30 out of 50 of their recommendations, and we mostly ignored another 15 of them. And there's like five or six that we took. So that part was more explicit. We still don't know who actually wrote any of these guidelines. That's still a black box. But there was also an entirely separate scientific Advisory Committee that RFK made and he gave them a couple of months instead of a couple of years to do a so-called rapid review of the evidence. And and then he had his own folks, again, black box, take those scientific rapid reviews and make the actual guidance from it.

• 43:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:53Speaker 03

  Certainly not an improvement on the process.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  Not an improvement.

• 43:56Speaker 03

  A worsening on the existing terrible structure.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  Right. And the scientific advisors that wrote these scientific parts of the report also had tons of industry ties, every single one, almost. So that part is really no different, even though they're trying to frame it as this is free from bias, etc. They also are very explicit in these guidelines that one of the things they really did not like about the previous guidelines is that they had the audacity to take into account things like health equity, ethnicity, culture, socioeconomic status, race, all of these things were considered in the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee's actual guidelines, recommendations. And this report has an entire paragraph saying, how dare you take that into consideration?

• 44:44Speaker 01

  That's not what we're doing here.

• 44:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  So points for that kind of transparency, right? And honestly, I think that one of the big things that these guidelines do is show the same exact trend that we've seen in pretty much everything that Maha touches, whether it's raw milk, whether it's food dyes, whether it's anything, which is a real rejection of any sort of scientific expertise and a remaking of facts to fit a specific agenda.

• 45:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:11Speaker 01

  Being explicit about it. But then also a packaging and like a branding of these very real health issues that are indeed facing Americans as something that we could fix individually by just eating more broccoli and steak. Right? Like, we have huge issues in our health system. And as we have talked about and will continue to talk about, many of us struggle to meet these dietary guidelines. And people around the globe live with chronic diseases that poor nutrition has contributed to. But it will take structural changes to actually.

• 45:49Speaker 01

  Fix any of these issues, right?

• 45:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, and a willingness to actually stand up to industry and require some sort of regulation over advertising, over what they can put on a label.

• 46:03Speaker 01

  And none of that has happened thus far.

• 46:05Speaker 03

  No.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  Now, if we take a step back and look globally, pretty much every single country has some version of dietary guidelines. Many of them do use a little pyramid shape, which is so interesting. Why has that become the thing? And there's, of course, a lot of regional variation in like what countries are using as like their food examples, or like, are they calling things grains or starches or what have you? But across the board, there's a lot of very common themes that come out. And that are things like an emphasis on fish in many guidelines, an emphasis on lean meats, and limiting or moderating meat consumption. That's in most other guidelines. Over half of countries have some specific messaging around increasing consumption of legumes and plant-based sources of protein.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  And about 75% of countries have some kind of messaging about dairy. So not all, but a good chunk of them. And most of them that have anything about dairy specifically mention low-fat milk or low-fat dairy products. And then pretty much all countries mention things like limiting fat to some degree. Some of them separate out the types of fat, and then limiting salt, limiting sugar, etc.

• 47:16Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  I also love that some countries go like a few steps further. And like their dietary guidelines also include like conditions on how you should eat, or like recommendations on physical activity. Apparently in Brazil dietary guidelines, I don't know if they still do this, but in 2015, they said that you should dine in company to develop relationships.

• 47:35Speaker 03

  Oh, love that.

• 47:37Speaker 01

  Isn't that so nice? Okay. So if we look very broadly, and like we try and incorporate all of what these other country guidelines, the World Health Organization recommendations, and what like nutrition science more broadly tells us, what really is the healthiest diet?

• 47:56Speaker 01

  If we look at the preponderance of evidence, a healthy diet seems to be one in which we get a wide variety of foods that are going to meet our macronutrients, so protein, fiber, carbohydrate, fat, and our micronutrient, so vitamins and minerals, requirements. It's going to be one which relies primarily on plants, including vegetables, fruits, and whole grains. And for many of us, plant-based sources of protein are going to bring health benefits. And animal-based sources of protein can be incorporated as a part of a healthy diet. And across the board, based on all the evidence,

• 48:38Speaker 01

  the things that we should be limiting are saturated and trans fats, added sugars or free sugars, and sodium. And it is true that ultra-processed foods are very often high in sodium, sugar, and saturated fats.

• 48:52Speaker 03

  Right.

• 48:52Speaker 01

  That's the end.

• 48:53Speaker 03

  Yeah. So we have, we have these guidelines, these, these ones that change every five years in the United States. We have other sort of society guidelines or like these, these, these ones that where there's consistency across the globe. How are we doing? Is, is any of us meeting any of these guidelines?

• 49:16Speaker 01

  I'm so glad that you asked, Erin. That's what I wanted to tell you next.

• 49:20Speaker 03

  Okay, good.

• 49:21Speaker 01

  So in the US at least, we can look at the Healthy Eating Index. 2020 is the most up-to-date ones that we have. They have a separate one for like children over age two and then another one for toddlers.

• 49:32Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 49:33Speaker 01

  But all across the board, we fail to align with any version of dietary guidelines for Americans. Okay?

• 49:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:42Speaker 01

  Our standard American diet, which you can abbreviate as SAD.

• 49:47Speaker 01

  Is indeed, it's pretty, it's pretty bad.

• 49:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:51Speaker 01

  The mean healthy eating index scores for the total population was 56 out of 100. Goal is 100.

• 50:00Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 50:01Speaker 01

  And toddlers, it's 63 out of 100. So toddlers are doing a bit better, which is shocking to me based on my toddlers.

• 50:08Speaker 03

  I mean, 63 though is still.

• 50:11Speaker 01

  It's not great. Yeah. Probably my kid is much less than that. That's an average, right? And these data come from like a whole bunch of really wide ranging surveys. Despite those abysmal overarching statistics, according to all of this data, the majority of individuals over age one are at or above dietary guideline recommendations for total grains.

• 50:36Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 50:37Speaker 01

  Refined grains, which is maybe the less great option. Total protein foods.

• 50:43Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 50:43Speaker 01

  Protein and meat, poultry and eggs.

• 50:47Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 50:48Speaker 01

  So we're doing just fine there.

• 50:50Speaker 03

  We're hitting things. Yep.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  Where we are falling short is vegetables, including all subgroups of vegetables. And they group them by like green versus red and orange versus again, bean, beans, peas and lentils were in there as vegetables. We're falling short on fruits. We're falling short on the dietary guidelines, recommendations for dairy or fortified soy alternatives.

• 51:12Speaker 03

  Huh, okay.

• 51:13Speaker 01

  As well as seafood, nuts, seeds, soy products and whole grains.

• 51:19Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  So you might ask, as I did, why do we need recommendations telling us to emphasize protein and animal protein when we're already getting enough, if not too much, and we're falling short in so many other regards? If you want to go even deeper, and you know that I do, we can look at other like macronutrient profiles. Only 6% of us in the United States are meeting our fiber recommendations, which is 25 to 35 grams of fiber a day.

• 51:51Speaker 03

  It's actually quite, so I've been a little bit obsessed with fiber because of, because I feel like we have talked about this in something else beef in some, maybe it was a poop episode or something.

• 52:00Speaker 01

  Poop, yeah.

• 52:00Speaker 03

  And I was like. How much fiber am I like I had no concept of how much I was supposed to eat like yeah, you can hear 25 grams, 30 grams or whatever, but like, what does that actually look like?

• 52:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 52:11Speaker 03

  And it's a lot of fiber. It's it is. And so yesterday I sat down with John and I calculated his, not mine, because I I for and also I've been taking fiber like, yeah, I've been having fiber supplements and stuff and trying to eat a lot of fiber. But John is just like, well, I think I eat a good amount of fiber. And I was like, do you? He does, actually. He he hit 30 grams. I was like, are you kidding me?

• 52:35Speaker 01

  That's amazing. I thought he only ate chicken.

• 52:38Speaker 03

  No, he's a big smoothie vegetable guy. And so it's like, most of the day is smoothie vegetables, and then it's chicken and vegetables at night and

• 52:45Speaker 01

  That's great.

• 52:46Speaker 03

  I think that like, it was really a good exercise for me to be like, okay, what does this actually look like?

• 52:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 52:53Speaker 03

  In terms of consuming fiber.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  Right. And it's, I mean, fiber is like, it is the one thing that I do a lot of counseling on in all of my primary care visits, my preventive care visits, when we're talking about food and diet, because it's also that like, foods that are high in fibers tend to be also the foods that are good plant proteins, and they have a lot of other micronutrients and things. So like, to get your fiber from whole food sources, you are also shifting the overall diet profile that you're eating, which is like, oh, fiber's great. Now, more. 89% of us are getting too much sodium. See our salt episode for more.

• 53:33Speaker 03

  I include myself in that. Yeah.

• 53:35Speaker 01

  65% of us are eating more than 10% of our calories in added sugar.

• 53:41Speaker 03

  Mm.

• 53:42Speaker 01

  Which is a lot. 82% of us are eating more than 10% of our calories from saturated fat already, before these recommendations to increase animal protein, to increase the fat in your dairy, to use butter.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  And it's only older adults, about 5 to 15% of older adults are maybe not getting enough protein. And that's like a low percentage compared to all of these other numbers. It is true, though, like that our nutrition in the US is not great and it impacts our health. It's estimated that $700 billion each year is spent on healthcare costs related to nutrition-related chronic diseases, right? So these do have huge consequences on individual and public health. So if we are falling short in these areas, why? Like, what are the barriers that people are facing? And who is going to face, or who is going to

• 54:36Speaker 01

  see the impact of these newest changes that we're seeing? That's where I want to go next. There are very substantial differences in access to food and in health outcomes in this country, based on race and ethnicity and socioeconomic status. Now, in this country, race and ethnicity contribute so hugely to differences in dietary intake. And it's largely due to historic marginalization and structural racism that's driving inequalities in socioeconomics and education. These are the two biggest factors, socioeconomics and education, that are associated with diet quality.

• 55:17Speaker 01

  We also see huge geographic differences in the US. People in rural United States and in food deserts, whether in rural or urban areas, have substantially lower quality diets. And there's socioeconomics and historic redlining and like food deserts where even if you have food, like, let's say your bodega on the corner carries fresh fruits and vegetables, they're going to be sky-high prices compared to the Walmart, which is out in the burbs that you can't get to because you don't have a car. Right. Right? Yeah. So there's huge amounts of inequalities in our food system, and that is baked into our food system. The scientific report from the Dietary Guidelines Committee that was not used to

• 56:02Speaker 01

  make these guidelines really emphasized the need for us to do more research on those aspects, for us to understand what those drivers are and how we can actually address them systematically.

• 56:15Speaker 03

  Right.

• 56:15Speaker 01

  And the Dietary Guidelines said, absolutely not, we will not be doing that.

• 56:19Speaker 03

  Right. We are not going to acknowledge anything beyond personal choices.

• 56:23Speaker 01

  Exactly. 100%.

• 56:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:26Speaker 01

  But if our personal choices are that we're not eating according to these guidelines anyways, then what, like you asked last week, what impact are these changes really going to have? And I think that one of the things that's important is that because these dietary guidelines are guiding policy for school lunch programs, for military nutrition programs, for what is covered by WIC or the Women, Infants and Children, which serves over 47 million people, these changes specifically to increase things like full-fat dairy, to increase protein recommendations, to avoid processed foods, these could result in pretty substantial changes being integrated into what foods are available in schools.

• 57:09Speaker 01

  Now, my kid goes to a public school and gets breakfast and lunch at public school, which is wonderful, thank you, State of California, but the food choices that he gets are often quite bad. Like, he eats graham crackers for breakfast because those count as whole grains. I'm not, I'm not even joking.

• 57:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, I know you're not. I mean, this is like, Cinnamon Toast Crunch is a whole grain cereal.

• 57:33Speaker 01

  He gets Cinnamon Toast Crunch, whole grain, low-sugar Cinnamon Toast Crunch quite often. He brings home the little packets sometimes.

• 57:39Speaker 03

  5% reduced sugar now.

• 57:41Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. And do you know what? They don't taste as good, but that's besides the point.

• 57:46Speaker 03

  But that is the point, but yeah.

• 57:48Speaker 01

  Yes. But so it is possible that these changes could result in in choices that are higher in whole grains, that are lower in sugar and that are lower in sodium, and that would not be a bad thing. That would be a really good thing. Mm hmm. Will there be increased budgets for this? Because those foods are going to cost more money. So will this result in better food choices? Or will it result in less access? Will departments and programs have to decide, you know what, we can't give universal school lunch anymore. We have to go back to having income limits on who can actually access school lunch, which, again, that's a bigger issue and has a whole bunch of things associated with it, right? Universal school lunch is an amazing thing. So is there going to be

• 58:33Speaker 01

  budgets for this? To be able to implement and incorporate any of these recommendations into policy changes? Will increasing full fat dairy be beneficial for kids? Will it end up having more calories because they're still going to be drinking chocolate milk? Because that's what they all choose. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And I think that we don't know, right? We literally just don't know. We don't know how this is all going to happen, how it's all going to shake out. So time will tell. [laughing] It's the like, short answer of like, who, how, how are these going to be impacted? In theory, you know, medical professionals and nutrition professionals also rely on these guidelines when they're counseling patients. Or when learning to, in their training.

• 59:17Speaker 01

  Or when learning. Are they going to rely on these guidelines? Or are we going to see what we've seen with the dissolution of the ACIP, where all of the other professional organizations make their own guidelines? And that's actually what's used, and no one's even using these guidelines. We don't know. I do think, like we talked about earlier, what is so different about the way that these guidelines are being presented is how they are being marketed, and how much they are being marketed.

• 59:45Speaker 01

  To the American public directly. And they're doing so under this guise of caring about people's health. While at the same time rejecting examining any socioeconomic determinants of health. You know, rejecting science in a lot of ways for their own individual interests. And then also marketing this with commercials like the one with Mike Tyson that shames foods. That shames people's bodies for what size their body actually is. Again, without any meaningful policy change to make sure that people have access to foods or have the time to engage in physical activity or like any of these other things that we know

• 1:00:29Speaker 01

  would be beneficial. So I, I don't know, Erin, I am skeptical that there's going to be a lot of benefit that comes out of wrapping up these nuggets of truth or these nuggets of what we know to be quote unquote, common sense in what is so hard to disentangle. Good advice from ideology that's not based in reality.

• 1:00:54Speaker 03

  Science, industry, ideology.

• 1:00:57Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:00:58Speaker 03

  Where, where does it all like, what does the, the pie chart look like?

• 1:01:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:01:04Speaker 03

  It's different for, for each different thing. And like, I feel like what, what I really drew from this, there are consistencies and I think highlighting those global consistencies is really, it's really interesting because there are things that like, haven't really changed and there are maybe minor changes from, from year to year as far as these go. But like, we do have a roadmap. And it's just that there's a, an unwillingness, especially from the federal government to provide the funding or the resources to enable everyone to, to use that roadmap.

• 1:01:39Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. The other thing that I swear, this is my very last point, Erin.

• 1:01:45Speaker 03

  We'll see. No, just kidding.

• 1:01:47Speaker 01

  Because I don't have time to get into it, but I feel like it's an important thing that I don't want to just gloss over entirely. The impact of dietary guidelines on climate change.

• 1:01:56Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:01:57Speaker 01

  Okay, there's really wide ranges in emissions estimates of various specific countries' recommended diets. And if the entire world was eating an old US diet, not even the newest recommendations, it would substantially increase global greenhouse gas emissions. And now with an emphasis on dairy and an even stronger, we always had an emphasis on dairy, but a stronger emphasis on dairy and a stronger emphasis on animal protein at the expense of plant protein, that is also going to result, if it is incorporated, in more greenhouse gas emissions, worsening of climate change. There was also changes with like alcohol and making it much more ambiguous what the recommendations are

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  and not explicitly saying you should not be drinking alcohol, period. Which is what the old guidelines actually said. They were like, no one should be drinking alcohol if you are going to. It should be no more than one to two a day, depending on who you are. And now the new ones are just like, limit your alcohol consumption, which like, what does that mean? Now I swear I'm actually done, Erin.

• 1:03:02Speaker 03

  No, I mean, you, you bring up a good point about, about emissions and it's all, I, I think what it also reveals is just like, how much of this again is about American agriculture and, and, and interest in that, in that area.

• 1:03:16Speaker 01

  100%.

• 1:03:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:19Speaker 03

  Tell us where we can learn more about this.

• 1:03:22Speaker 01

  Well, of course, you can read all of these guidelines for yourself. I've got links to the report that came out in 2024 and then the scientific foundation that they wrote, the new scientific committee that RFK made, wrote, as well as the several page dietary guidelines document. It's all there. I also have some data like going back on previous dietary guidelines so that you can kind of see the evolution. And then a bunch of papers about the global, there was a couple really great ones. One from 2019 that was called a global review of food-based dietary guidelines from advances in nutrition. And then another one from 2021 that was a comparison of dietary guidelines among 96 countries worldwide. I've got that climate change paper.

• 1:04:05Speaker 01

  It was from 2018, so it's a little bit old now. But anyways, we got, we got so much there for you on our website, thispodcastwillkillyou.com.

• 1:04:14Speaker 03

  Yes. Thank you to Blood Mobile for providing the music for this episode and all of our episodes.

• 1:04:20Speaker 01

  Thank you so much. Thank you to Leanna and Tom and Pete and Mark and Jess and everyone at Exactly Right for everything that you do to make this podcast possible.

• 1:04:29Speaker 03

  Thank you, thank you. And thanks, listeners. Tell us what you think. We're curious.

• 1:04:34Speaker 01

  Did you like this episode?

• 1:04:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:36Speaker 01

  We had fun. And thank you, as always, to our patrons. Your support really does. It means so much to us, so thank you.

• 1:04:43Speaker 03

  It does. Until next time, wash your hands.

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  You filthy animals.

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